This is one of those things in life where it took me several times to actually sit down and write it out. Putting yourself out there and exposing your heart to the world is never easy, but I feel like its only fair to share my experiences with others not for sympathy or attention, but in hopes that it may help someone through their tough time or it might help me find someone to help me through. So here is what has happened in our lives this fall and winter.
September 7th I found out that I was pregnant. This was so wonderful because we had been trying for a while. I was so excited I took the test out to Daniels work and showed him and went and told our parents that night. Of course they were all so excited, but I was reserved and told them that I didn't want to tell everyone until we had made it through our first trimester. I don't know why, but I was nervous about shouting it from the rooftops. I felt as if there was a lingering voice telling me that I shouldn't get too excited. I knew the statistics 1 in 4 women loose a baby. 1 in 4! I felt that those were really high and even though you never want or could imagine that it could be you the reality is that someone has to be that 1. I as still doing all of the fun and exciting things that a new mom should do; take pictures once a month of my growing belly, crave foods such as bbq sandwiches, complain to her husband about all of the gas, and hug the toilet every morning. Our first ultrasound was scheduled out to be on October 28, but due to some bleeding I went in on the 23rd. The baby was alive and dancing up a storm almost as if he were saying look I'm already an entertainer. It was right on track growth wise and by this time he was two and a half months old! The doctor reassured me that there was no immediate danger and that they would see me on the 28th for a more thorough first trimester ultrasound. When the day finally rolled around I was so excited for Daniel to be able to see our little baby. We never expected anything, but more dancing. It only took the doctor all, but five minutes to say that the baby's bladder was too big and that she was going to send us to OHSU to have it better looked at. She said that she had never seen a bladder as big as our babies was at eleven weeks. Leaving that day I didn't know what to think there was hardly any information given about what that meant, so we had to sit around and stew and wait until November 5th, a whole week later, to find out.
When we got to OHSU I was still hopeful, maybe it was nothing or at least fixable with all of the new technology. We were there for about an hour they were taking tons of pictures of our baby, who had the hiccups that day. But when it came down to it to big black space in my babies abdomen, where there should have been beautiful body tissue was bigger and the cyst that was on the umbilical cord had turned into two. They then took us into the other room to fully go over what we saw on the screen. Our babies bladder had gotten so big and backed up that it had caused the kidneys to swell past the point of them being able to function if it was born and eventually the cysts would start cutting off the blood supply to the baby. They said that they were amazed, by the progress of the dis-functioning system and were impressed that our baby was still alive. We were still in disbelief and confusion and didn't want to ask the question that needed to be asked. Is our baby going to survive? As gently as they could put it the answer was no. It was only a matter of time, but our baby would not live to see this world. Our baby had a chromosomal abnormality that is called trisomy 18, it was a non-genetic abnormality, which means that it could happen to anyone at anytime and there is no explanation for why. We were then given some choices we could wait for another three weeks and come back and see what was going on, wait to see if it even made it that long, or medically interrupt the pregnancy. With any of these choices we still wouldn't win, the outcomes were all the same we would not have a bouncy baby in our home in May. I wouldn't wish the amount of emotional and spiritual devastation on even my worst enemy. On November 13th our baby went to see his Savior and we went home empty and with utter sadness. He was 14 weeks, just beginning his second trimester.
Daniel and I decided to name our baby Jude. This was the name that I had picked out for a boy since the beggining and I just kept telling Daniel that we didn't even need girl names because this was going to be a boy. Although no one from the outside world couldn't and wouldn't have known that a baby existed inside of me, we knew and we picked up our baby Jude's ashes on December 31, 2009. I acknowledged this with a tattoo of our babies name over my heart because my baby who didn't have the chance to live in this world will forever live in my heart.
