One year ago today

May 6th last year I woke up so excited because I was going to go to the perinatologist for a special ultrasound. The first real peak at the little baby growing in my belly. I made sure I got to work on time so that I could leave early without feeling guilty. I got there, signed in and waited. They finally called my name and took me into the nice little room. It was a nice room with all new equipment. My husband could not go with me because of work but I was totally ok with that. I was 11 weeks at this point and was in the for the Nuchal Translucency test. 


So it began... the young nurse started the measurements and was really talkative while doing so. Then she measured again and again. Then the room was quiet and she said the doctor would be in a moment. The doctor walked in and re measured the baby again, she was quite and looked so serious that I even asked her if everything was OK. She just said “I will go over everything with you in a moment", again the nurse was back printing and printing all the screen shots. I thought I was going to be able to start a new album just on this one visit. My heart was pounding and that 45 minutes felt like an eternity. The lights came on, I sat there waiting and waiting some more.

Then they said they seen something really wrong given the measurements that they took. This was new to me because this test was not given to me when I was pregnant with Julian. They were measuring the fluid in the back of the neck. (This is normally less than 2.5mm and when seen increased greater than 2.5mm, see image on the right may indicate the baby has Down syndrome or may indicate another chromosomal abnormality. 95% of measurements will indicate a reduced risk).

I was measuring at 7.5!!!! Right away they asked me to make an appointment with the genetic counselor. They asked me if I wanted I could have the CVS test done. At that point I was scared and confused. I just wanted to get out of there, I wanted to run away. I opted not to get that test done that day. I made an appointment for the following week to speak to the genetic counselor. So I walked out, crying, shaking with a new word in my vocabulary that I had never heard of or needed to use, hydrocephalus.

Just two hours before that I was such a happy pregnant person with no care in the world. In such a short time my life had changed. So many selfish thoughts crossed my mind, I hate to admit. How was I going to possibly raise a child with a defect? I hate myself for thinking those thoughts but I would be lying if I said that never crossed my mind. What about Julian I thought, he was still so little. We would have to give so much attention to this new little person and I thought he would be affected by that without having a choice in it. Never did it cross my mind that the defect that my baby had was not compatible with life, death was something I never thought of, not even at that point. I was just feeling sorry for myself that my life would be so different. I prayed to God to give me the strength to be able to accept my fate. I hate myself for thinking so selfishly!!!

I called my husband and cried and cried, I could barely speak. I wasn’t able to go back to work. I went to pick up Julian from my mom’s, I held him so tight and I cried some more. From that day on, my nightmare roller coaster began. My husband didn’t want to believe that there was something wrong. He looked and looked at the picture they had given me and he cried too. It was clear that there was a lot of fluid there. We were both so scared; our pregnancy was no longer full of blissful joy it was tainted with fear. I think from that point on I was no longer able to sleep well. The following week we had the CVS test done, waiting for the results was just nerve wrecking, horrible. I think I cried everyday for those 2 weeks. I didn’t enjoy those two weeks; I took my pregnancy for granted. At that point I had no idea what was really going on.