After you’ve seen the positive result of your pregnancy test, the first thing that comes to mind would likely be, “How many days or weeks am I pregnant?” The next question is likely to be, “Is it a boy or a girl?” Well, your family and friends, and even strangers would like to know as well. Most likely, you constantly receive questions asking what the gender of your baby is. Fortunately, a DNA test while pregnant will help you answer with confidence all those curious minds of what you are having.
While there are many ways to know the sex of your baby, there is a relatively new form of prenatal testing called non-invasive prenatal testing or NIPT. It is a low-risk test of detecting the gender of your baby and more importantly, determining if your little one is at risk of some genetic or chromosomal abnormalities. This advanced DNA test while pregnant works by looking for the strands of the unborn’s DNA that are floating freely in the blood of the mother.
So, this method is also referred to as cell-free DNA, or cfDNA. This fetal cfDNA derives from the placenta, which is highly to be genetically identical to the baby. The tested cfDNA can be used as a basis to know if the gender of the unborn child by looking for the presence of Y-chromosome which can indicate that it is likely a boy. If this chromosome is not present, then it’s more likely to be a girl.
Apart from screening the gender of the fetus, NIPT is a DNA test while pregnant that is also used to detect any risk of congenital diseases. The accuracy of the test depends on when it is done through the pregnancy, the blood sample drawn, and how the test is performed. However, several studies have found that this test is done after 8 weeks of gestation, the accuracy level is nearly 100% for sex determination while it can be a bit lower for chromosomal disorders.