Shan’ann Watts was suffering from an autoimmune disease called lupus. In some ways, lupus corresponds to the very early stages of pregnancy – its symptoms may be difficult to diagnose.

One way to monitor lupus is through blood tests, including via skin prick.

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According to WebMD:

Blood work…can also help monitor [lupus] and show the effects of treatment.Doctors often use the ANA test as a screening tool. Plus, looking at patterns of the antibodies can sometimes help doctors determine the specific disease a person has. That, in turn, helps determine which treatment would be most appropriate.

There are a battery of tests related to lupus, but the one that applies directly to Shan’ann Watts seems to be this one: Antiphospholipid Antibodies (APLs)

APLs are a type of antibody directed against phospholipids. APLs are present in up to 60% of people with lupus. Their presence can help confirm a diagnosis. A positive test is also used to help identify women with lupus that have certain risks that require preventive treatment and monitoring. Those risks include blood clotsmiscarriage, or preterm birth…

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One 23-year-old lupus-sufferer, Tessa Shoemaker describes going through  “a billion finger pricks” en route to her diagnosis. What does this have to do with the sex of Shan’ann’s baby? Actually, a lot.

To begin with, lupus sufferers have an elevated risk of miscarriage, so vigilant monitoring is a given. I’ve maintained from the beginning that Shan’ann knew she was pregnant virtually immediately, probably due to her obsessive compulsive monitoring of her health in general.

Thanks to some of the stars following CrimeRocket we’ve established that besides knowing when she was pregnant, there was also a way for Shan’ann to have known the sex of her child prior to that doctor’s appointment she missed on August 13th.

According to Parenting.com:

Parents dying to know the sex of their baby may no longer have to hold their breath until halfway through a pregnancy. A blood test can reveal a baby’s sex as early as seven weeks into a pregnancy, which is earlier than many doctors will see patients for an initial prenatal visit.

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The blood test, called a cell-free DNA test, has been used by European doctors for years and has actually been available to American consumers in drugstore chains and online for a few years… The simple test analyzes fetal DNA in the mother’s blood, looking for traces of the male ‘Y’ chromosome. News of the surprising accuracy of the test (98.8 accuracy for a boy and 94.8 accuracy for a girl) was originally reported yesterday [August 10, 2011] in a meta-analysis of 57 studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 Doctors hope the test (which costs a few hundred dollars, including lab fees and shipping costs) will help families with a history of sex-related genetic disorders such as hemophilia (which tends to affect boys) avoid unnecessary invasive procedures, like chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis, that carry a small risk of miscarriage. And, in fact, in England, where the test is already in use, many moms are already skipping invasive tests, thanks to this blood test.

It’s certain that Shan’ann’s lupus treatment involved blood tests as a matter of course. She may even have actively monitored herself. It’s very likely then that she would have monitored the lupus side more closely because of her pregnancy, and vice versa.

The lupus aspect also raises the possibility of numerous medications being in the home – beyond the norm. If Shan’ann was skin pricking herself regularly as part of her own self-monitoring regimen, and if she had some pain medications stocked at home, then this may well have set the path to his murderous psychology. Pain medication in high doses can be used as a sedative, an anesthetic or a murder weapon.

This issue goers to motive. It’s vital to the narrative simply because if Shan’ann knew the sex early on, Chris Watts probably knew too, and the more he knew about the child in her womb the more he felt trapped or pressured by the baby’s relentless development.  Given the circumstance of this, that he knew more sooner rather than later makes sense.

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