An emotional week

Right now I am walking on a cloud, overwhelmed with pure elation, relief, and gratefulness but right behind me I see the dark wall of fog that we only walked out from a few hours ago. This, undoubtedly, had been the longest, scariest, most life changing week of our entire lives.

Last Monday we went in for our 20 week ultrasound and left only knowing we were having a baby girl. My new doctors office sends its patients to a third party for their anatomy and growth ultrasound which is then read by the radiologist and sent to the OB afterwards, so you leave not knowing if everything looked okay or not. The ultrasound definitely took a lot longer than it did when I was pregnant with Liam. We noticed the technician checking a few things over and over again but chalked it up to nothing when she said they take a lot of pictures because sometimes the baby moves and gives a better shot. Luckily I had my regular four week check up the following day and we hoped to heard that the report was good.

The next morning I went to my appointment and my OB told me that they had found two things that were “abnormal but common” and that I needed to see a high risk specialist to have it further evaluated. The two things that they found were a singly artery umbilical cord (normal cords have one vein and two arteries and she only has one vein and one artery) and a choroid plexus cysts. Thus begins the longest week of our lives. (Side story: later that afternoon I totally succumbed to the fear of all this and broke down…Liam was the sweetest little boy and walked over to me and put his paci in my mouth hoping it would help, oh how I love that sweet boy)

Thank goodness for dr. google who provided me an explanation as to what these condition were since my doctor didn’t do anything but drop the bomb and leave. It was scary looking at all of that information, oh so scary. What we found out was that both were soft markers for chromosomal abnormalities and that is what we were going to the specialist to further evaluate.

Luckily the specialist had a cancelation for Thursday afternoon and we able to get us in. If they had not had that cancellation we would not have been able to go in for FOUR WEEKS! Praise the Lord for that cancelation; I don’t think our hearts could have bared waiting that long for answers.

Well Thursday finally came. We had a very generic idea of what to look for during the ultrasound and what we wanted to see and what we did not want to see. The technician we had was AMAZING! She pointed out everything she was seeing and letting us know when things looked good and all markers of good signs. One of the most universal abnormalities we looked for structurally were in the hands and little Lucy had her perfect little hands wide open! After the ultrasound was done the doctor came in to talk to us and told us that everything looked perfect (her hands, feet, limb length, heart, kidneys, and all other markers they were specifically looking for). He pointed out the two abnormalities that they saw on Monday and said that having one or the other would have made it an isolated case and we wouldn’t have come any further but since there were two present (with he felt strongly was just a coincidence) it did increase our chances greatly (from 1:800 to 1:200) of their being a chromosome abnormality. We weighted our options and decided that we would do an amniocentesis. That way we would know that everything was okay or what we were up against and needed to prepare for. The whole ending of that appointment, through the amnio, and the rest of the evening was such a blur and I was in such a fog that I barely knew what was going on. Just as an FYI the amnio sounds way worse than it actually is. I mean having a long needle shoved though your abdomen and into your uterus to extract amniotic fluid does not sound like it would be the best time but it really wasn’t as bad as you’d think, plus I had some pretty awesome people in the room getting me through it. And then we waited….

At this point I need to give the biggest shout our to my parents and in-laws without whom I would not have gotten though the end of the week/weekend. I was unable to take care of Liam for two days after the test and he got to have two sleepovers. Thank you guys so so much for all of your help and support, I don’t know what we would have done without your love, help, and prayers!

All weekend my heart literally tried to beat out of my chest. That phone did not leave my site for a second….but it didn’t ring… Finally this morning I knew by the end of the day I would know one way or another how little Lucy was. Liam and I packed up for our normal Monday routine of grocery shopping and errand running. I needed to get out of this hour and stop staring at the blank screen on my phone. Every time the phone would ring (Alex and our realtor) my heart would drop with anticipation of seeing what number was calling. Finally, in Target, I number I didn’t know called and it was the genetic consoler. Immediately she said she had good news She said that all of the chromosome findings were normal as well as the findings for neural tube defects. Praise the Lord our sweet baby girl was healthy!!!!! I thanked her a million times for the best news I have received in my entirely life and then found it extremely hard to keep myself from falling to my knees to cry tears of joy the news I had just received.

I cannot explain how this week has changed my outlook on so many parts of my life and others lives. I will never be able to put into words how extremely grateful I feel for all I have been blessed with. For my sweet, energetic, healthy little boy and my precious little Lucy who I doubt we will ever stop holding and kissing and thanking God for.