It feels a bit crazy to only just now be sitting down to tell her story but life comes at us quickly, and I find that I only seem to have the time or inspiration to write moments before drifting off to sleep. In those times I most often choose clicking my phone off, rolling over and nuzzling into Nic. Because he's the best. But you already know that.
I only realized I hadn't taken the time to tell her story when we were preparing for her first birthday (say WHAT?!) and I randomly clicked on my blog link on my Instagram profile and saw that my last post was months ago and I had nothing on here that hinted at what had been going on. I don't want to lose the opportunity to tell it while it is somewhat fresh in our minds. And if not for my sake, then for hers, so we never ever forget to remind her of what God did.
It all started with what you already know- a totally shocking discovery of our pregnancy. One I had a really hard time coping with, for various reasons- I still was grieving our quick move from the states, missing my family like crazy and in all honesty, battling some crippling bouts of anxiety and depression. A surprise pregnancy all but pushed me over the edge. But you already know that, because I've already shared that story. This isn't about that.
After selecting my midwife and having an appointment with her, we went in for our 12 week scan. At this point we still hadn't told many people about our news, as we figured we would wait until we had a little scan photo to send along to announce to our families overseas. I genuinely was looking forward to seeing a tiny person on the screen. It always seemed to help things feel more real. Somehow something beyond the pink plus sign and nauseating morning sickness would help me feel a bit more ready. Nic was able to take the morning off of work and we had an auntie kind enough to look after the big kids for us. We both sat in the waiting room with a shared feeling of anticipation. The wait took much longer than expected, but we happily sat together enjoying the break from our normal routines. When we were called into one of the clinic rooms the scan technician went through all of the usual procedures, gave us some full body shots of the babe to marvel at and quieted down as she continued to carefully scan every millimeter of this tiny person bouncing on the screen. She seemed to be paying close attention to the nuchal translucency. {A collection of fluid behind a baby's neck that is measured to asses potential for Down Syndrome or other chromosomal abnormalities.} We'd never had a scan this early with our other two babes so we weren't quite sure what we were looking at but she seemed perplexed. And a bit out of the blue, she scurries out of the cozy room and returns a few minutes later saying she'd just needed to confirm a few things with her superior. She'd never seen a measurement as high as what our baby was showing. We didn't really know what the heck she was talking about but she starts shuffling around saying she'd called over to the lab and they were going to send me over for some blood tests and mumbling nonsense about how sorry she was, and "this scan is on us, you don't need to pay for this." We were stunned. She had us sit back in the "holding area" while she printed off a picture for us and said something to the affect of "Better luck next time." Not. Kidding.
The lady at the front knew I was coming ad shoved me to the front of the line for "urgent blood work." Whatever that meant. A few arm jabs later and we were headed home. Confused and so weirded out by how everyone was treating us. They told me my midwife would be in contact with me soon. Naturally, I thought this would mean a few weeks later but she called before we even made it half way home. She gave me a lot of information. My blood work revealed really high numbers for the risk of various syndromes, and we were being referred to the specialists at the hospital. Any steps taken towards further monitoring or further testing would be 100% up to us and she'd support us the entire way. It was a lot to take in. What was going on?! How could this be? We're young, have had healthy pregnancies in the past, have no real family history of this sort of thing... But here we were. Staring down the potential of having a baby with chromosomal abnormalities. My mind went to all of the things that could have caused it-- Was it my fault? Because I had been so upset? Had my crazy emotional stress caused this? Was it because I'd had trouble with ovarian cysts when I was younger?Or maybe because I had a chest Xray for my immigration paperwork during the early days of the pregnancy and I was none-the-wiser? Was it like what my mom's wee baby sister had that passed away when she was only a few days old? Why on earth would our baby be abnormal? It just didn't make sense. I cried. But not much, or for very long. There was an undeniable peace that overcame Nic and I both.
The peace, the resolve- it was almost instant. It was incredible, you guys. I went from struggling with confusion and frustration to finding myself excited and ready to tell off anyone who expected us to end the pregnancy. We recognized our need to let go, everything about this was literally out of our control. If we ran all the tests they suggested, and discovered there was a definite chromosomal abnormality- it wouldn't have changed the course of the pregnancy. It could be a scary thought learning how to adjust to life with a special needs child but-- every baby is different, you adjust to their specific needs one way or the other- this wouldn't be any different. We would love and cherish our baby the same. This baby was 100% the Lord's. We hadn't planned for this tiny person, but God knew all along. And if our family was meant to walk this path we would. We were not to fear. We could choose to spend 30 more weeks in misery wondering what could be.. or commit it all to the Lord and let Him be in control. We couldn't change what already was.
Somewhere along the next few weeks we told our families and closest friends about the babe that was on the way. We mentioned what had been found in the scan and in our blood work to our parents and siblings but really kept it to ourselves beyond that. The scan photo hung on our fridge and we smiled every time we saw it. We even had an accidental announcement because of the photo! Our church plant core team had a meeting at our house one week and one of the guys must have seen it when he went into the kitchen congratulated Nic in front of everyone, haha. Beans spilled everywhere. But we had a good laugh about it. Everyone was excited! We'd be starting this new church with a brand new baby! (Two of the other families wound up sharing the same news before we had kick off, three brand new babies from the core team, pretty awesome if you ask me!)
Fast forward to our 20 week scan. We were told we had to have some sort of special scan to monitor the extra things they'd called into question so I called the original place we'd been to and they booked us in. After we arrived for our appointment and waited for well over an hour, they came in to tell us we'd have to book in somewhere else- they were sorry but they hadn't seen the note in the file and the woman who was trained for this kind of ultrasound worked in a different location. This gave us a few days window before the next scan.
In this time, our close friends and some people we hardly knew had found themselves really pressed to be praying for us and our wee person. They weren't sure why. So they asked, and though we'd never felt like we needed to share what had been seen at the first scan, we told them about it, and about the mix up with the 20 week scan. These lovely people jumped at the opportunity to come pray for us.. Maybe this was why there had been a mistake made.. We needed to be praying. Of course we needed to be praying.
I made my way to the 20 week scan where they, once again, found something wrong. There was a cyst on the placenta. The nuchal fold was still astronomically thick. And the babes bowels were echogenic. {Which means they were visible on the scan- highly unusual, but points to infection or internal bleeding.} The scan technician verifies some things with her superior and once again, delivers some news I'd rather have not heard. All 3 factors are indicators of chromosomal abnormalities, we'd have our information sent along to the board of specialists to have a look at and we really should consider having extra testing done. Which would mean having a placenta sample taken and an amniocentesis. Still firm in our decision to not worry about what was going on too badly, as far as abnormal chromosomes went, we declined the testing again.
We didn't want to be fearful or panicky, but we also didn't want to be irresponsible. If there were step we should be taking or things to do to better look after our baby we wanted to know them. So we agreed to start seeing the specialists at the hospital. A few weeks later, one of the specialists called us into her office, she wanted to see first hand what was going on in my belly. Within 4 weeks the cyst on the placenta had grown, nearly doubled in fact, and the baby's bowels were still showing up.. The nuchal fold was decreasing in thickness but she said that it was fairly normal around this time anyways, since this was the gestational age where babies generally start to grow by leaps and bounds- which would always mean the neck stretching out a bit... So good news, ish. More good news was that, physically speaking the baby was growing perfectly- bones, organs, everything else looked great. She wanted me to get blood drawn to rule out infections for causing the bowels to show up, and mentioned that while the cyst was growing, it didn't seem to have a vascular component, which meant it wasn't drawing away from her blood supply. They couldn't be sure, but they assumed it was just some amniotic fluid. There were so many unknowns, and she kept reiterating that we wouldn't really know what was going on until we met this tiny person.
The weeks continued to pass, my blood work continued to point to a whole host of problems and I suffered from long bouts of prodromal labor. Hours of timetable, real contractions that would start and stop had my fear of meeting our babe too early on crazy levels. While I had resolved to trust God fully, I still was human (and hormonal), and would find myself a bit emotional from time to time. Frustrated and worried. Praying, and begging for forgiveness for feeling so angry in the beginning. I wanted this baby to be okay, they just had to be. Despite the hospital staffs strange jokes about trying to get the cyst to rupture, "Jump on a trampoline.. Or go on some jest skis. Haha! Maybe that could solve this problem! Who knows?!" I found myself instinctively trying to be extra cautious, not wanting to lift things that were too heavy, or do anything that could cause the cyst to rupture.
Our amazing support came from family and friends alike. Everyone was looking after us and praying for us, helping us with any babysitting needs we had. We didn't share too much of the scary news with people, aside from the core group of people that had been praying for us, because more than anything we didn't want it to take away from any excitement there was for the new babe. God was in control! If there was anything we found to be of importance to share we would, but we mostly kept a lot of it to ourselves. We continued to monitor everything through scans every few weeks (which, by the way, made waiting to know the sex of the baby nearly impossible but we somehow managed!), by about week 34 they'd made it clear we'd need to deliver early. The cyst was growing so much that it could start to impede baby's growth and with the other heightened risk factors they didn't want to take any chances on getting baby out too late. They booked us in for delivery the day after 38 weeks.
I was a bit terrified of being induced. I had heard so many horror stories over the years that I couldn't fathom it ending in anything other than some emergency situation.. It went against everything I'd every hoped or wanted for the births of any of my children. But my midwife was confident that all the contractions I'd been having had readied my body and the induction medications would simply give me the boost I needed to finally move into active labor. She was such a huge help and encouragement throughout the entire process, she just made me promise to try to not make her miss the Cricket World Cup Final! I made no such promise. Haha! And its good that I didn't because while the staff at the hospital seemed to think it'd take days for the induction, it took a little less than 12 hours.
{Insert long and brutal birth story where the hospital staff didn't believe I was in labor so they didn't bother monitoring me or baby properly, and I almost hemorrhaged, and my midwife misses the Final here}
Guess what?
She is perfect.
Her health is perfect.
Her chromosomes are all normal.
The extra Special Care Unit (NICU) staff were not needed and were quietly ushered out of the room while I held my perfect little angel.
The months we would have spent worrying about what life would be like with a child with Down or Turner syndrome would have all been for naught.
We gave her to God from the start and I am so thankful.
She is such a joy to our lives.
Her pregnancy and infancy changed me, healed me, and helped me discover more about myself than I ever thought possible.
Oh, and the cyst? Well, that old thing was nearly the size of her head. And it was on her umbilical chord pooling her blood. And though they sent it off to a lab, it yielded no clear answers on the how, what or why. It should have ruptured during labor, if not weeks before, which would have caused her to bleed out, or drown in her own blood. I stand firm in my belief that the only reason she had a high nuchal translucency at the start was so we'd have to go back for extra testing and find the cyst. If I had gone through the usual relaxed pregnancy approach and not been so cautious, there's no way to know if she would have been okay. I believe she survived and is healthy today is because of the prayers of our incredible friends and family. They will always be a part of her story, and it will always be told as so.
Thank you to all of our precious friends who tirelessly covered our wee girl in prayer. We're forever connected by our sweet miracle girl, Aubrey Mae.
"The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.." James 5:16
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." Philippians 4:6
"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17
