Little Bean Update

There is nothing quite like hearing that your child may an abnormality. I think my initial shock resulted from fear and the unknown. I cried a lot. I cried so much that my eyes burned, even when I closed my eye lids. The very next day, I still couldn’t accept it. I cried again and again. I cried so much that my boss sent me home from work. I then regained some focus and was somewhat enlightened by a few discussions that I had with family and friends. I never found peace with what I was told, but I felt comforted.

When Wyatt was born, and I got to hold him in my arms, I realized right then that I felt something that I have never felt in my life. It was a raw, pure and deep love. It’s a feeling that is so strong and difficult to describe with words. It’s a feeling that his life is more important than mine. I never felt this way before about anything or anyone. I love my husband, my family and friends but there’s something about the love that you have for your child that’s…different. It’s natural, instinctual and very strong. I know in my heart, that whoever this child is, that I will love them just the same.

Still in shock about the recent Ultrasound, I apprehensively went to an appointment this morning with my OB. I had little anxiety, as I was pretty focused on gaining more knowledge, asking questions and getting answers.

The doctor explained that the baby has a tiny cyst on its brain called a Choroid Plexus Cyst. The choroid plexus is the part of the brain that makes cerebrospinal fluid, the fluid that normally protects the brain and spinal column. Fluid could be pinched off causing a cyst (similar to a blister). In a majority of cases, the cyst will resolve itself. In a very small percentage of babies with choroid plexus cysts, there is an associated chromosome disorder (trisomy 18). Usually if the baby has this, they are stillborn. However, it’s about 1 in 3,000 that have this.

She basically said that they review a number of different factors in addition to the cyst. Like, the baby’s physical features (clef lip, absence of a nasal bone, etc) then they also look for other “soft spots” such as in the heart or kidneys. If they see a lot of spots, they have more cause for concern for the baby. If it’s just one, generally, they are not too worried. She also stressed that because I am not high-risk that the chances of an abnormality are slim.

She really explained to me that this is something that is somewhat common, and getting more common that they are starting to believe that it’s just a normal part of the baby’s development. She hates that they even have to mention that it’s abnormal because most Parents-to-be have the same reaction as I did. For now she recommends that I try to relax and enjoy the pregnancy as if it’s completely normal and advised that I do not do any additional elective testing at this time. She really doesn’t seem too concerned about the baby, therefore believes that additional testing is unnecessary.

She did offer me a few additional options moving forward. We will first have a follow up appointment with her on May 9^th to review the pregnancy. At that time they will order me another ultrasound, where they will focus on the baby’s brain and the general growth of the baby. I will be requesting a specific technician to review the ultrasound.  If that ultrasound comes back clear, then they will discontinue any further testing. If they find that the cyst is larger or that there are more noticeable soft spots, we will discuss further testing at that time.

In the meantime, Glen, Wyatt and I are going to have an elective 3D Ultrasound at Womb with a View where we will have the opportunity to see baby’s face and hopefully have a better ultrasound experience than we had at our 19 week appointment in the hospital. 

Additionally, I just wanted to thank everyone for the messages, phone calls and texts over these past few emotional days. It truly means a lot to me to have connected with so many people. I’ve had the opportunity to listen to other similar experiences and connect with a few amazing Mothers who have a special needs child. I really felt comforted and you’ve all given me strength during this emotional time.

One last thing I wanted to share was a blog post that was forwarded to me. This birth story was written by an amazing mama who gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. It really touched my heart but it’s a tear jerker, so be prepared to cry.

http://www.kellehampton.com/2010/01/nella-cordelia-birth-story.html

17 Weeks

These weeks are flying by. Can you believe that in just 23 weeks we will be welcoming a new family member into our lives?

When I think about it, I get a little scared. I’m barely able to keep up with anything or anyone in my current situation, how am I going to handle two kids?

Mornings are challenging. I get up around 5:45 to start my day.  Glen is not home by this time so I have to tip-toe around the house and try to get ready for work without waking Wyatt. Naturally, he usually wakes up at 6am anyway. So I usually juggle a shower and watching Wyatt in the morning and mostly that consists of letting him play in the bathroom and hallway until I’m done while I keep some-what of a watchful eye. I then step out onto everything that he took out of the bathroom drawers and cupboards and I always have to check the toilet for items as well. This occurs when he’s NOT opening the shower curtain the entire time and/or trying to get IN to the shower, fully clothed while I’m trying to wash my hair. *Sigh*

Then I usually tie my hair up and get dressed in whatever fits these days which is not much. Wyatt is in this stage of needing to do everything that I do, when I do it. So if I brush my teeth, Wyatt screams “teeth” at me the entire time until I get him his tooth brush. If I brush my hair he screams “hair” until I give him my hair brush. Of course, when it comes to using the potty, he has no interest in copying me. ZERO INTEREST! And honestly, I’m fine with that. I’m not upset that he has no interest in the potty. He’s only 19 months and I know that he won’t be in diapers when he’s 17, so this is fine for me.

I then pick out Wyatt’s clothes and diaper for the morning and attempt to get him dressed and ready for school. Attempt is the key. First of all, Wyatt hates sitting still so to get him to sit still for a diaper change is torture. Then, as soon as I do manage to get his diaper off his hand gravitates towards his boy parts. He knows that they are now free and he MUST touch them. Then he squirms and kicks while I try to fasten the diaper. Then it’s time for the clothes which I usually have to put on him while he’s standing or running around the room. After all of that, you know what he sits still for? His shoes! He knows that putting on shoes means that he gets to go somewhere good (usually) so he’s always very happy to put on his shoes and coat.

After we look appropriate for going out, I have to fix him some breakfast, pack his diaper bag and pack my lunch. All while a dog literally runs underneath my feet every five seconds. What’s up with that anyway? Since it’s been winter FOREVER in PA this year, I still have to warm the car up prior to leaving since Wyatt doesn’t wear a coat while riding in his car seat. Every morning I run out to start my car and Wyatt throws a fit because he thinks that I’m leaving without him. It’s actually kind of sweet. Once it’s warm, I shut off all the lights and we are finally on our way (around 7am) but not before Anakin says bye-bye to Cocoa and “Kinkin”.

So that’s pretty much the easy part and it sucks. Next comes the hard part. I take Wyatt to school and he’s SOOOOOOO happy. That is, until we reach “the button”. I let Wyatt push the button to get into the daycare center, which he loves, but when we are all done pushing the button Wyatt freaks out and cried “button button”. Then finally, when we walk down the hallway with everyone looking at us, he calms down just in time for the next part, Mommy leaving. As soon as I put him down he screams and cries and runs to me and hugs my legs. Large crocodile tears are running down his face and the only distraction is the teacher offering him some crackers. This is my morning. Every morning. Nothing like having your heart broken over and over and over again, the same time every day.

When Wyatt was little I used to pump in the morning AND feed Wyatt. How am I going to go through the toddler morning PLUS the baby morning? Well, I have an answer to that but we’re not quite there yet.

I’ve been researching daycares lately. I started with Wyatt’s current daycare. We pay a weekly rate of $250.00 for Wyatt and newborns are $280.00 with a ten percent sibling discount off of Wyatt’s rate only. That comes to…$26,260.00 a year. Ouch. Then I researched other daycare centers and the lowest I found was $175 for a toddler with a $200 infant combo deal of a whopping $19,500.00. So then I started asking about Nanny, and that would be about $14-$15 an hour or approximately $30,000.00. So then I thought, well what about an in-home daycare. I called somewhere around fifteen prospects and heard back from eight. Most infants start at $4-$6 an hour for in-home care plus a sibling rate. The very minimum I would be looking at would be $300 a week or approximately $15,600.00 a year. That is much more manageable than my other child care options. But then I’m reminded, or maybe I should say haunted?, by the memories of my childhood in-home day care provider. And then I remember Glen’s horror stories from when he was a child and something doesn’t sit right with me. Even though this option is affordable, I’m not 100% comfortable with a stranger watching my child and having children who are too young to really communicate with me. An even though it’s affordable, let’s face it, $15k a year is a lot of money to dish out on childcare.

Another stress that’s been slapping us in the face lately is that we have had to find last minute child care for Wyatt once every other week since January. Glen has had to use several vacation days and my parents have made several trips down to be with him.

So then came the talk, what are we going to do now? And this is where the hard decisions come into play. Am I working so that my children can go to a daycare? Am I missing out on these precious early years because of my career? No decisions have been made yet, but we agreed that me staying at home after baby #2 arrives may be a realistic option for our family. I can supplement our income by holding a part-time job in the evenings and also working on my photography business part-time. At this point, I’m not ready to leave my position and there’s really no reason too. This is especially difficult for me because I actually so really like my job and the company that I work for. I might be burning my bridges with this company which scares me. I’m truly at a crossroads in life and I’m not sure which direction I should take. Should I push through it for just a couple of years until Wyatt and baby #2 are in school? Should I stay at home with my children, which means that I’m giving up my position and career and potential future earnings? I can’t imagine that this is an easy decision for anyone and I don’t think there’s a “right” answer, which I suppose is why it’s such a difficult decision. I’m just really afraid of making the wrong decision and letting my family down.

So that’s what’s been going on recently in our lives.

Baby #2 update time!

Baby #2 is doing great! I can feel the kicks from the inside pretty regularly and I have felt kicks on the outside one time. I have a little belly now and at 17 weeks, I’m in maternity clothes full-time and feeling much more comfortable.  I think I’m still in that uncomfortable stage where people are wondering if I’m pregnant or if I gained weight, so I’m getting looks but no one dares to ask.

Glen and I went to our first centering pregnancy class. It’s a group appointment that Hershey just started to offer last year. It’s an evening appointment and it runs about 2 hours one time a month. You check in and receive your medical chart. I noticed that most of the Mom’s in my group must be welcoming their first child because my file was huge compared to theirs. You then go around the room and visit different stations at your leisure. Blood pressure, weight, pee-in-a-cup (more on this later), and then you get to sit down with an OB and have baby’s heart rate checked (160 in case you were wondering). Lastly, you sit around in a group and talk about pregnancy related topics. Last week was nutrition and medications. I had to fill out a very embarrassing food journal from the last week which included nearly everything in the “junk food” category. It was a nice discussion and it was nice to be in a class setting with other Moms.

Now for the weird…Let me go back to the pee-in-a-cup station. So, you visit a small table in the lobby with a plastic cup and a label with your name. You find your cup, take it into the bathroom, do your business and then bring the cup back out and put it on the table. OK…weird number one. Everyone can see your pee-cup and they are all hanging out in the open together in the lobby. They are only 2 feet from the snack table which is also disturbing. I was one of the last to pee-in-a-cup so it was easily noticeable to me that one cup was filled to the rim. Everyone else’s cup had about ¼ cup o’ pee or less except for one cup that was completely filled with pee. Now, I don’t really know “proper” pee-in-a-cup etiquette but I think it’s weird to fill it up…it’s not your gas tank! What if the person checking the cup struggles with the lid and has splash back do to the filled cup? I also noticed that I judge your pee-in-a-cup contents. If it’s dark yellow I get a little grossed out. If it’s barely yellow, I feel like that person should get an award for staying well hydrated. If it’s full to the rim, it doesn’t matter what the color…it’s weird!

Next weekend is my “big” ultra sound appointment, YAYYYYYYYY! We chose not to find out the gender at this time, but I’ll be happy to see my little baby squirming around. I hope he/she cooperates this time and gives us a pretty profile picture to share with you all

Ultrasound Results

It's a Boy! 

...or Girl?

We actually do not know the gender of our baby, and I'll go into that in a minute but first I want to write about something else. 

I have been excited all day for my ultrasound appointment at Hershey Med but I actually had a really upsetting experience and now I truly mean this when I say it, I do not care if our baby is a boy or a girl, I only care that it's a healthy baby. 

The ultrasound itself seemed pretty standard. I did notice two things that seemed a little abnormal to me, but what do I know? I'm not a healthcare professional. The tech seemed to spend a lot of time reviewing the heart and the brain. This is probably standard, so I wasn't alarmed but then after the scan, I received some upsetting news about the results.

After the tech left, the Director told me that their was something abnormal about the brain. He said some sort of long medical term that I forgot in less than a second. Then he told me that it could mean a chromosomal abnormality in the baby and suggested Downs Syndrome. After that I couldn't hear anything he was saying. It was covered up by the sound of a little piece of my heart dying. I couldn't concentrate or wrap my head around what he just said, I was horrified.  I tried to hold back tears while he was telling me that something could be wrong with my baby. He then stated that the only thing they could do to verify the findings was by an amniocentesis procedure. The risk involved is miscarriage, about 1 in 200. The odds are seemingly in my favor but I had to ask myself, what would I do if I made a decision that killed this baby? I declined the test.

I keep telling myself that it's no big deal if the baby has down syndrome, that I will love it just the same. But, I'll be honest here, I'm terrified of having a Down Syndrome baby (or one who has a different chromosomal abnormality). I'm scared for the life that baby would live with and I'm scared of my own responsabilities. I realize I sound rather heartless and selfish. I think that hearing this news would be hard for any parent and I really do praise those who shake it off like it's no big deal. Seriously, I admire that! I wish I was like that but I'm not, I'm really scared.

So, those who have heard this news have asked me about further testing or have asked my when my next ultrasound is and my answer to that is that we will most likely not be finding any more news about this until the baby is born. The Doctor stated that the next step would be the amniocentesis procedure and offered no additional testing or ultrasounds outside of that. So what are our next steps? I'm going to try to set up a meeting with my OB to discuss the findings in detail. Because I was in total shock at my appointment today, the Doctor just sounded like the teachers on Charlie Brown and I didn't have the opportunity to let it sink in or ask questions. My next step is to ask more questions such as, is there any other testing or monitoring that can be offered to us? What kind of odds do we have of having a baby with a chromosomal abnormality? Am I able to get a second opinion?

So that's where we are now. Writing about it really helps me collect myself and reflect. We will be just fine here in the House of Charron, whether our baby has some sort of abnormality, or not.

So, let me now rewind to the beginning of my appointment. I was sitting with one of my besties, Dawn in the waiting room chatting and also really hoping that I wouldn't get the older, over weight nurse with a mustache and a skirt. Instead I got a younger girl, maybe in her early thirties who seemed nice. I told her at the beginning of my appointment that I didn't want her to tell me the gender of the baby.

The tech wasn't very personable and she treated spoke with a monotone voice explaining the different parts of the baby. "here's the leg, here are the kidneys, etc". Baby didn't really cooperate through the ultrasound. At the end I asked if she would fill out my note card with the gender. My plan all along was to have the gender written down in an adorable homemade card mailed to my photographer for a surprise gender reveal in May. To my surprise, she refused to fill out the card and then said that she never looked at the gender so she doesn't know. Maybe I should have been more proactive in explaining my plans to her, but even still, she wouldn't have written down the information. So, now we *really* don't know the gender of our baby and might not find out until September when the baby is born. Honestly, I'm fine with that.

This has been an emotional day for me. One bad day that I hope to forget. For now, any prayers for our family would be appreciated.