The beginning....

Today is the day that I finally worked up my nerve to start getting all of this out in the open for the world to hear. Losing a baby to a terminal disease, is to me an impossible thing to over come. I am in a place where my faith has been rocked and the foundation of that faith has holes in it and I feel like I am going to fall through one of them. I would like to share my experiences with you if you would be so kind as to listen.

My life was as I thought that it would be from here on out. I am in love with the man of my dreams , together we had the Brady bunch (six children), a lovely home, work was good. We were content. Then sometime in February I realized, as I was taking the last pill in my pack of birth control pills that I had not "started" yet!! OMG!!! I told Joey and I think that I scared the daylights out of him because he said absolutely nothing! This went on for about a week, then I took "the test" it was positive!! I went and showed him and his words to me were " What are we gonna do now? We have 6 kids!" Well about another week went by and I said to him "Have you given any thought to our situation?" His words were " NO I thought that if I didn't talk about it, it would go away." I thought that I was going to burst at the seams laughing at him! We agreed not to tell anyone just yet and we did keep it a secret for about 2 weeks. Then one morning at church just as the children were being dismissed to my classroom he stands up and tells the whole church that we are expecting a new addition to the family! Jaws dropped and there was a complete silence in the church for about 2 minutes. Hands began clapping, my sister in law started crying and my pastor who is also my brother in law hugged me and we were all VERY excited to have this addition to our family.
For some reason that I still cannot explain the pregnancy seemed wrong. Not in the sense that it was wrong to be pregnant, but that something wasn't right with this one. When I was 9 weeks I began to spot bleed and I was completely freaked out so I went to the hospital. They did an ultrasound and everything was okay. She was still in tacked and we could see what was forming into arms and legs kicking and punching and her heart was beating properly. I was completely relieved, but in my mind there was something that I couldn't explain that was very unsettling to me. Something was still not right. What was it? Was it paranoia like everyone said, or was it that something was really wrong? I didn't know.
On May 3rd 2007 I was working and I received a phone call from my doctors office telling me that there was a problem with my AFP test (alpha-fetal-protein), and that I was at risk for Trisomy and I needed to go to the genetics doctor the next day. Well I had no idea what Trisomy meant, so I researched it on the Internet and what I found broke my heart into. My baby was going to at best be severely deformed or she would die. It took my breath. I went to the genetics doc on the 4th and the genetics counselor asked me if I knew what Trisomy was and I was crying so hard that I just handed her the info I had printed from the web and shook my head yes. She ever so kindly and gently told me that I was a 1:20 chance for T18, and that in order to be sure i needed an amino done. I knew it was risky, but I HAD to know. we did an ultrasound and everything seemed to look okay. No markers, nothing unusual. She measured on schedule, so we hoped and prayed that everything would turn out okay.
The next Monday on the 7th I got another phone call. On the other end was my genetics doctor with terrible news. "Your baby tested positive for Trisomy" she said. My knees hit the floor and I called Joey. "Our baby is going to die....she has Trisomy18 " I cried. Joey came to me and we held each other and sobbed. He took me home and we held each other more. We knew we had to tell the other children. How were we going to explain this to them? I couldn't even wrap my head around it and I was going to try and tell them? I couldn't do anything, but be completely honest with them. Amazingly they were all so wonderful and they asked questions and the best part is that they didn't care that she was sick they loved her with all their hearts anyway!
A couple of weeks later at another ultrasound we saw that she was a girl!! Her little legs were threw up over her head and she was just a shinning that little moon at us as if to say "here it is now kiss it!" It was a funny little moment in the middle of a tragedy. My daughter already had a sense of humor! That's how I like to see it anyway.
The rest of the pregnancy was long and very hard. I couldn't be excited about anything. I was terrified that she would die before I could look into her eyes and tell her I love her or see her breath, or even cry. I knew her days were numbered and I had a lot of planning to do. I just didn't know how to plan for a baby that I may never get to bring home from the hospital. I had no idea what to do. I just didn't realize it , but I didn't have to do anything God was doing it all.