It's ANOTHER Boy

The day we found out we were having another little boy was a day that can only be described as an emotional roller coaster.

My parents came into town for a visit, so that they could be here when we found out the big news. So, they were babysitting Jack, while Gordy and I headed up to Indianapolis for a level II ultrasound on baby number two.

We were so excited to finally know the gender of our baby, but also a little anxious that we might learn during the ultrasound that this baby has the same heart problem Jack was born with. Putting another baby through open heart surgery is not on our top ten list of things we want to do ever again.... So like I said, we were a little nervous.

When they called us back to start the ultrasound, we told them that we wanted to know the gender right away. She quickly adjusted the ultrasound wand, and it was obvious, even for us, that we would be welcoming another little boy into our family. We couldn't have been more excited. It will be so perfect to have two little brothers so close together in age. We chatted aimlessly with the technician as she checked the leg bones, hands, kidneys, and other various parts.

Then, the Doctor came in and interrupted our level II ultrasound. "Sorry to interrupt" he says, "but you need to rush over to another hospital. You need to be at Riley Children's hospital in less than ten minutes. The cardiologist needs to look at your baby's heart." WOMP, WOMP, WOMP. Words of doom to us. We had no idea, absolutely no idea that we would have to have a cardiologist look at our baby too.

Then he goes on to say, "Oh, and we also found a cyst in your baby's brain. It's called a choroid plexus cyst AND it's a soft marker for trisomy 18." Time stops. The whole world stops, but some how the room is spinning. All the blood in my body rushes to my legs, and I'm tingly, dizzy. It's the sort of feeling that's hard to describe, because I've only had it one other time in my entire life, when the cardiologist told me that my 11 day old Jack would have to have open heart surgery before he turned one. Tears come.

"Well, what does that mean?", I ask. "What are the other markers?"... "Well" says the doctor, "That's why you need to rush over to the other hospital, if your baby has heart problems chances are very likely that he will have trisomy 18". "We also look closely at your baby's hands. Clenched fists are another sign of trisomy 18." Our hearts drop to the floor. Just two minutes before the doctor walked in we were commenting on how cute our "little boxer" was when we were showed an image of both of his hands in tightly clenched fists.

We were instructed to go to Riley, have the ultrasound, and come back to Indiana University Hospital to finish our ultrasound there.

It's difficult to describe what we went through in those few hours. On our walk over to Riley I think that we went through all of the stages of grief.

Denial. "This can not be happening. Not to us, not again."

Anger. "All we want is a healthy baby. We do everything right. This isn't fair."

Bargaining. "Please, Heavenly Father, please. We'll do whatever it takes, just let things be okay."

Depression. "Our baby may never have a normal life, we may never have a normal life again..."

Acceptance. "If this is what Heavenly Father wants for our family, I know he'll bless us to get through this."

That's a lot of emotions to feel in the space of an hour. A lot.

Our nerves were completely frazzled by the time they called us back for our baby's heart ultrasound. Thousands of silent prayers being sent up every second.

Thankfully the ultrasound went smoothly. The cardiologist talked us through the entire thing, assuring us that each part of the heart he checked looked perfectly normal. Whew. At this point we're feeling pretty okay knowing that a heart defect is high on the list of things we don't want to deal with again...and so relieved that we more than likely won't have to put this baby through open heart surgery too.

On our walk back to the hospital we were feeling alright. Wishing we could be focused more on the fact that we just found out we will be having a boy, and dwelling less on the fact that our baby might have a genetic abnormality.

Then we started wondering, well what is trisomy 18 anyway? Neither one of us has ever known anyone with trisomy 18. So we decided to google it. Bad idea. The first thing we read was about how most people alive with trisomy 18 are girls because the boys usually die before or during birth. Of those that do live, 90% of those with trisomy 18 die before they turn one. That sent our minds swirling again.

We checked back in with I.U. where the nurse promptly informed us that the doctor wanted us to speak with a genetic counselor before continuing our ultrasound. Sheesh. Why would they want us to speak with a genetic counselor if everything was okay?

Anyway, we met with her and she was lovely and so nice. She walked us through what are odds are of having a baby with trisomy 18 and what trisomy 18 actually means. She also talked to us about our testing options and took a complete family history.

Then we went back in to finish up our regular level II ultrasound that we started the day out with. Now we were equipped with the knowledge that based on what they have seen on the ultrasound, our chances of having a baby with trisomy 18 was 1/465. If they found anything else wrong, our chances would jump to 1/2. Yikes.

Our hearts where in our throats as they turned on the ultrasound machine and the technician placed the wand against my belly. The very first image we saw was both of our baby boy's hands spread out wide open, as open as they could be.

We cried with relief. The rest of the ultrasound went smoothly as they checked his nucal fold, feet, and various other parts of his body.

After talking with the doctor, we decided that for our peace of mind we would go ahead and take a new test called the MaterniTY21 test. It is actually so new that it only got approved in the U.S. last October and there is only one lab in California that is capable of running the test. The test involved drawing two vials of my blood, in which this company can isolate the baby's DNA that is circulating in my blood. Then they can run tests on the baby's DNA and see if the baby has extra copies of the 13th, 18th, or 21st chromosome.

It took a week to get the results back, and thankfully they were negative. So hopefully we should have a healthy baby boy in August.

But boy, oh boy, what an emotional roller coaster we were on that day! Of course we called all of our family members and let them know about our day, and we cried every time we told the story.

Once we got back to Bloomington, we had some work cut out for us. We still had to get everything ready for our gender reveal party with my parents and our friends.

We decided to fill a giant box up with balloons, have everyone write on the box what they guessed our baby would be, then open the box and release the balloons! They little kids had such a good time playing with the balloons. We all had ice cream sundaes, and then we went outside to let some of the balloons fly away. It was a nice way to end such an emotional day, you can totally tell in the pictures that I am spent.