My Wee Baby...

I haven't posted in a while due to all of the stuff that has been going on. I will start with what we learned before we went on our trip to Colorado. When we had our first ultrasound at 20 weeks, the technician wanted us to see a specialist at the hospital because of a possible birth defect she thought she saw. A few weeks later we went to Maternal Fetal Medicine at the Utah Valley hospital. We had two ultrasounds which confirmed the birth defect. The birth defect they found was Bilateral Clubfeet. That was hard in itself to deal with. Then they took us to another room to discuss it with us and all to discuss some tests that they would like to do to see what the possible cause for the clubfeet may be. They already ruled out Spina Bifida because the spine and all that looked perfectly healthy and normal. They had also ruled out genetics because of our family medical backgrounds. The thing they wanted to test for was a chromosomal defect known as Trisomy 18 or Edward's Syndrome. This is when there are extra chromosomes throughout all of the cells. What this would mean for the baby we found was basically that the baby would not survive in utero, not survive labor and delivery or not live longer than two months. I was given the choice of having an amniocentesis or a blood test through my blood. I had a bad feeling about having the amniocentesis, and we felt there was too much risk to the baby. We decided to do the blood test. After much stress and tears and waiting, we finally got the results back. Even though the test is not 100% accurate or as accurate as the amnio would have been, the tests came back normal. They still want to continue to check the baby's growth throughout the course of the pregnancy to be totally sure. That is enough relief for me. I can handle the clubfeet situation, especially since they don't do surgery on it anymore. They do casts for the first 4-6 weeks and then foot braces after that until she is about 3 or 4. I can deal with that. It is hard to realize she won't be like my other children, in that she will have struggles that they never have nor ever will deal with, but I am grateful that she will be here and will live a long life.