21-10-2009 - my precious baby

My mood while writing this blog: happy

well i just thought id write a little something about my pregancy so far!! im 18 weeks 6 days and havent been able to enjoy this pregnancy as of yet...cant believe im 19 weeks tomorrow...time has gone so fast as all ive been doing is worrying...things sometimes arent as simple as we might think they are...

i went for my routine 14 week ultrasound all excited and ready to see our little baby..we even took our 3 year old to see her little bro or sis on the screen!!! evrything looked fine to me and i was to busy pointing out to sophie the babys hands "waving at her" to notice the nurse popping out to call someone else in...afterwards i was told the babys head was measuring bigger for my dates and they found a lot of fluid in and around babys head and brain..i was reasurred not to worry to much about it (easier said than done) and my due date was bought forward by nearly 2 weeks over baby being bigger!!! i was sent on my way with an appointment to return 2 weeks later for a more detailed scan. i but any bad thoughts to the back of head and just got on with things...

so 2 weeks passed fast enough and i was back in the scanning room... my fiance and mother came with me and i was just excited to be seeing my baby on screen again!!! the doctor and specialist explained that they would be scanning for awhile and not to take notice of them blabbering away as she would talk to me afterwards....the baby was moving around everywhere so i felt no reason to be worried.....she scanned me for 45 mins and turned to tell me when she was finished to take a seat she had some bad news.....i went blank...First of all she said our baby has a cleft lip and palate....not so bad news i thought but she went on to explain this was an underlying problem of something more major!!! shocked wasnt th word...she explained that it was likely to be a chromosone problem in the babies make up...she asked if we know what she meant by this and i said "Yes has my baby Downes Syndrome" which the reply was No we are looking at something much worse than downs syndrome....my world crashed down and i didnt know what to think...she went on to talk about my baby having trisomy 13 or trisomy 18 and these syndromes have no possitive outcome just "incompatibe with life"...she said an option of mine could be termination as the baby might not survive the rest of the pregnancy or die soon after birth or be born with serious non treatable diseases and malformations and would die....she offered me an amniosenthesis test there and then but i declined as i know the risks but decided to go home and think about it after talking it through with my family....not only mine and my partners world was turned upside down but both our familys were devasted by the news and we all came together and just cried....

i decided i wanted the amnio test done as the not knowing would drive me crazy....the doctor rang me to ask my decision so i told her id like the test done as soon as possible... she fitted me in that tuesday exactly a week after the bad news we got. So tuesday the 13th of october i went for the amnio terrified of what could go wrong.. i was yet again on the table getting scanned and as soon as my baby popped up my heart just melted as did my sisters (who decided to come along) and my partner....oh i love this baby so much!!! my sis was amazed at all the movement baby was doing!! When the needle went my sis said the baby moved out of the way as to say "hey thats not supposed to be here"....i cried with laughter and pain of the reality at the same time...after the babies heartrate was checked the doctor said she also thought my baby might have a thing called Holoprosencephaly... a rare brain disorder where the front of the brain dont grow right..she told me not to go looking this up on the internet as what id see is scary and might not have any symtoms that my baby might have and that this would not show up on the amnio results...confused i went home to rest and wait another week for results....i was pampered by my wonderful fiance david and my family all looked after me...these people are amazing..it goes to show how people come together in crisis...

the following tuesday came and it was time to go back for the results...me david and my mom went in and awaited the doctors....she arrived with my file..i was sooo nervous..Firstly she had her hand covering the top of the results when she asked did we want to know babys gender...an echo of YES came from the 3 of us!!! its a little GIRL....oh i love her already!!! before she went on all that was going through my head was all of the praying evryone was doing for us and the baby....well wishers that called to our home to see how we were and tellling us they pray for us...people gave us rosary beads and holy medals holy water the lot!! im by no means a holy person but when it comes to things like this we all need some belief and something to turn to....my sister was also in rome the same week and prayed in the vatican daily!! friends of friends that we didnt even know had masses said for the baby and had candles lit....unbelievable!!! well the results came back all CLEAR....yes no chromosone problems!! oh my god.we cried with relief and our sighs were so loud!! she was fine...so here i was being scanned again..the amnio had no effect on her she was so sick of being looked at she had her back turned to us and curled up in a ball with her hands and legs linked up!!!! we were reasurred her spine was perfect in the doctors own words "a beautiful spine!!" her kidneys stomach fingers toes back of her head absoulutely fine...she did have one worry though whcih was babies brain wasnt as growing as much as she would have liked...its measuring 2 weeks smaller for my dates...so im back again in 2 weeks for yet more scans and maybe an MRI scan on her brain.....i have a good feeling though everything will be fine.....oh and we also get 2 see her on 3D and 4D scan to check out her cleft lip and palate but i know she is just beautiful no matter what...its just to prepare us...its stil going to be a long journey ahead and maybe im still not 100% comfortable and relaxed with this pregnancy but with every big hard kick i get its like shes telling me "mammy stop worrying about me im fine"....so until then ill be praying non stop til shes in my arms safe and sound....my beautiful baby girl xxxx