4/19/2012

19 Weeks

We went in for a routine 2nd trimester ultrasound, wanting to see 10 fingers and toes and hoping to find out if we were having a boy or girl. Right away we got the feeling that something was wrong. The technician asked questions like, " Was your first pregnancy considered high risk?" (No, everything went great). "So how have you been feeling?" (I've had really bad all day morning sickness, but it's starting to get better). "When do you see your doctor next?" ( I just saw them this morning, but I can see them as soon as I need to). When we saw him write baby "A" on the screen my husband and I both knew it must be twins. Wow, talk about overwhelming and unexpected. Unfortunately we could quickly tell that was not the news or his reason for concern. He was easily able to tell us that baby "B" was a girl, when we asked about baby "A" he muttered that he thought a girl too. Then he told us that everything did not look right and that he was seeing some things that really concerned him. 

When he left the room to consult with the doctor I couldn't stop thinking about all of the terrible things that he could be about to tell us, hoping maybe it wouldn't be as bad as anything I imagined. Instead he came back and shared that baby "A" had numerous abnormalities, her brain hadn't developed past the brain stem, a cleft lip and facial abnormalities, that she had a heart abnormality and that she was "incompatible with life." The only abnormality that he could see in baby "B" was a cleft lip. After a consultation with the reviewing doctor we were referred to the Maternal Infant Care Clinic in Seattle for an appointment with a specialist the next week. Walking out of that appointment was nothing like we imagined. There wasn't the excitement to call everyone we knew with the great news, because it wasn't, what do you even say? It just all felt overwhelmingly sad. We wished we could meet with a specialist right away, and have all our answerd, but we knew we would just struggle with questions over the weekend.