So we had a little bump in the road these past few weeks. Great timing, seeing as we had Thanksgiving and moving all at the same time. I am a true believer though that God puts things in our path for a reason, and I feel like he was trying to tell me to SLOW DOWN and be thankful for the things we have and not focus solely on how behind I am in packing or all the things we have to do. I tend to make my busy life seem horrible. When in reality, the reason I am busy is because HE has blessed us. We are busy packing and moving because He has blessed us with a beautiful home. Anyway, I'm going to try to make a long story short here, but really a lot has been happening.
At my 15 week appointment for baby #2, I had blood drawn for my AFP test. You can google what that is, but basically it test for three things, down syndrome, trimsomy 18, and spinabifida. Last week I got a call from the doctor (first bad sign because usually the receptionist or nurse calls when everything is ok). She first told me that my blood work came back negative for trisomy 18 and spinabifida (which are the two worst out of the three). Then she went on to tell me that I was "flagged" as "high risk" for down syndrome and we needed to take further action. At that point all I wanted to do was cry and hang up. She kept talking, and to be honest, I don't remember everything she said.
Let me back up a bit. I don't want anyone to think that I was upset about having a child with down syndrome. Honestly, my first thought was that I had done something wrong or I had failed the baby. I also kept trying to picture our lives with a child with down syndrome, and I would just get overwhelmed with how different things would be and how the attention would really veer away from Jane. I of course would love the baby just as much and I would take whatever the Lord gives us, but it was just scary at first.
So, back to the doctors phone call. After she rattled off a bunch of numbers, she told me that she would send my blood work over to a genetic specialist and they would call me. That was it. Then we hung up. So I was just left with all this info, and then there I was having no idea what to think.
That day was very rough. There was a lot of crying and googling going on. I tried to stay positive the whole time and remember that God has a plan for everything.
Once I settled down a bit I actually called my doctor back so she could give me the numbers again since I wasn't really paying attention the first time. Here's what I was told.
So since down syndrome is more likely in older women, there is a ratio for each age group. For my age, my ratio is 1/820 chance of having a down syndrome baby. My blood work combined with that came out to be a 1/163 chance (which is significantly lower than my age and also lower than the test "cut off" which is 1/250), so I was "flagged"
Those odds still aren't so bad, but they are definitely lower than my age ratio. So, the genetic doctor called and scheduled an appointment for me to come in and have a meeting as well as an ultrasound to see if we can find any soft markers or characteristics of down syndrome in the baby.
We had to wait a full week to see the genetic counselor and let me tell you, it was a LONG week. BUT, my faith in God and his comfort really put me at peace. I was actually surprised at how calm and collected I was all week. I kept thinking about what people who don't believe in God do when they are in tough situations. I like knowing all things are out of my hands and in the hands of my Heavenly Father. Praise Him!
So at the appointment, we met with a Genetic Counselor. She basically just explained the test results a little further, gave us options for further testing, and talked about our family health history. Then we went into the ultrasound. I was so excited to see Baby Hunt since we hadn't seen the baby since 7 weeks and the baby was just a little dot. BUT, I was also super nervous about what we would see on the ultrasound.
The good thing is that unlike a normal ultrasound where normally the ultrasound tech can't really say much until they speak to the doctor, this ultrasound tech explained everything she was looking at and said whether it looked good or if she was concerned about something.
Long story short, Baby Hunt looked perfectly healthy according to the ultrasound. We were so relieved. BUT the ultrasound is only 60% accurate. So even if we were told Baby Hunt looked great, there was still a 40% chance, he/she still could have down syndrome. So, I opted to take another blood test while there that is 99.1% accurate in detecting down syndrome. I would get those results back for another week though.
While getting the ultrasound, we had the tech write down if we were having a boy or girl on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. We then opened it right away in the parking lot! haha! We just wanted to concentrate on the baby's health while in there instead of celebrating the gender. So all in all the appointment went well. We had good news from the ultrasound and we also got to find out the gender earlier than expected.
Fast forward one week later we got a great phone call saying that Baby Hunt is perfectly healthy and that he/she definitely does NOT have down syndrome. We could ignore the AFP results. Even though I already had a feeling everything was fine, this was just the last little weight on my shoulders.
Im not really sure how this post is coming off. Its hard to explain your emotions on the Internet. Basically I say this. We were scared, we were worried. BUT, our faith in our God had us ready for anything. We knew that He would NEVER EVER stray from his plan for our family. We would get exactly what he wanted for us and it was all out of our hands. Also, our family really stepped up in making us feel confident in raising a special needs child if it came down to it. We have the best family!
SO, there we go. My very stressful, rough couple of weeks.
