This semester is going great! Jake is killing it and school. . . and I'm not doing too badly either ;) I'm finally enjoying school and everything I'm learning so woohoo! I'm not afraid to encourage anyone that may feel defeated and stressed out by what they're studying to switch to something a liiiittle easier and become a normal, happy person :)
ANYWAY... Can you see our cute baby's profile?! I'm obviously biased, but it's the sweetest little profile I've ever seen.
A couple weeks ago, I agreed to do the quad screening test. This test basically SCREENS for Trisomy 21 (down syndrome) and Trisomy 18 (Neural tube defects, such as spina bifida). My insurance covered it so I thought, why not? Another test we went ahead and did was to check to see if I carried any mutation of Cystic Fibrosis.
About a week later, I had called in about the CF results because they still weren't in after 6 weeks. I had left a message with the nurses to please call me back when they had the results! One nurse did end up calling me back, but it was to let me know that she didn't know how to interpret the results and would have to wait for a midwife to call me. Looking back on that now, that could've been she didn't know how to interpret the quad screening results.
Anyway, wasn't freaked out. Everything was fine, a midwife would try to call me later. The next day, I got a voicemail from one of the midwives, Sue, that said, "We probably need to speak with you by tomorrow. I will make sure someone calls you." I was freaking out! It didn't help that I had listened to this voicemail at 3:00 pm, so I didn't have much time to call in and figure out what was going on.
About half an hour later, Jake texted me saying that another midwife, Kim, called his phone and said, "You guys should probably make an appointment with a perinatologist. Here's their number." And we were like WHAT?! We were one, googling what the freak a perinatologist was, and then going back to WHAT? Why did we need to call them for an appointment?!
That day, I was trying to call the midwives, the nurses, the perinatologist's office . . . anyone I could think of to try to get these results, but nobody was available. We waited until the next day and I decided I would just go up to the midwife's office. The Orem office is closed on Fridays, but the Provo office always has one midwife working there, so I went. The front desk lady told me I needed to make an appointment - probably for next week. I told her, as kindly as possible, that I was not waiting until the next week, especially if everything had sounded as urgent as it did. (Did they want me to play the voicemails for them!?!?!)
I was able to get an appointment with another midwife, Becky, at 12:15 that day. So I went to my physical science class and then returned to the midwife's office just in time. The nurse checked my BP, of course it was higher than normal ha, and my weight. Then she told me that they had been checking some websites to give me as much information as they could. This is when I figured it might be that I carry the CF gene, because Trisomy 21 and 18 are pretty well-known abnormalities.
When I finally got in the midwife's office, I was a freaking nervous wreck! I was sweating haha and on the verge of tears if I were to start talking. When she came in, she was so nice and again described to me what the test was a screening for - explaining that the quad screen gives you a risk factor for having a baby with these certain abnormalities, thus, not being fullproof and not guaranteeing that your baby will have anything "wrong" with him/her per se - which was nice. But I really just wanted her to get to the stuff I was there for!
She finally said, "We don't think that the quad screen results came back hinting at neural tube defects, but there is a higher chance your baby will have down syndrome." Then she basically went on to say that this isn't a completely negative thing. Many DS babies are born healthy and of course happy. I wasn't worried about having a down syndrome baby because of the way they look, or they way they act, or they way they think - I was worried about how I would handle a baby that may have to deal with several open heart surgeries and NICU time?! It was scary.
I finally asked her what the chances were that we were carrying a baby with down syndrome, and she said 1 in 10. That's a pretty high chance, as the national average is 1 in 150. I was thinking it might be 1 in 25 or 1 in 50 - 1 in 10 really hit me! But this was pretty much all she could say at the point, as it's not a definitive screening, and made sure that I had an appointment with the perinatologist. We did for the next Friday.
She let me listen to the baby's heartbeat - and it sounded great at 150 bpm!
All week, Jake and I were searching information about DS and the quad screening and trying to make sense of it all and trying to plan for IF our baby had DS markers and what we would do next. We also tried to have a lot of fun and stay busy and not stress about it - stress isn't good for me or the baby ;)
It finally was Friday and we were feeding the Mauldin's horses that morning so we got up early anyway. I made chocolate chip pancakes and eggs for breakfast and I'm pretty sure we watched an episode of Heartland. As we got ready, I could FEEL Jake getting more and more nervous! Haha he was not handling it well. I reminded him to wear deodorant . . . and he told me he doesn't sweat when he's nervous. Yeah right?!?!?!
We drove to the hospital, parked, walked in, filled out some paperwork, and waited. The nurse came and grabbed us and she measured my weight and BP - also higher than normal. I joked about it and she said, "Everyone that comes in here has a higher BP than normal, don't worry about it." Haha, I think my BP was 126/85 or something, so not terrible. I definitely pride myself in staying calm haha.
She walked us back into the ultrasound room. It was so nice and dark. I laid down and Jake sat right next to me and we met with the tech first. She was super nice. She had been working at this hospital for about 7 years and was super friendly and really knew what she was doing. Jake also was giving her a run for her money in identifying certain things and asking difficult questions ... anatomy students! Haha
She measured everything on the baby without spilling the gender, which was awesome, and she was super informative about what exactly she was looking for - nuchal fold, size of the femur, size of the head, the heart's 4 chambers and blood flow, the umbilical cord blood flow, etc. She also got us the CUTEST picture of our baby's left leg. Oh my gosh I about sent it to everyone right after.
She didn't give anything away about whether or not she had actually down soft markers because she's not the doctor, so although we had just spent 20 minutes riling up our cute baby, we still didn't know anything. Dr. Dizon-Towson came in about 5 mins after she left. She had reviewed the scans that the tech had gotten and said that they had found no soft markers. None at all. Wow. We were so relieved. It was a really amazing feeling.
Of course an ultrasound can't be definitive, as they can only show us physical things and of course trisomy 21 is a chromosomal thing, but it was still extremely reassuring and she didn't suggest we do any further testing (which was good, cause I really didn't want any). She also did a little ultrasound, just checking really fast over what the tech had just gone over. She got some nice frontal pics of the baby looking creepy at us and answered any and every question we had. We also made the connection that she was born in Cinci and then went to Medical school at UTSW and did her residency at Parkland! It's a small world.
We walked away from the ultrasound relieved and so thankful. We also walked away knowing that even if our baby had any markers for DS, we would love that baby just as much and would do anything and everything to ensure that baby was properly taken care of. We know that the moms and dads of DS kids are special women, and God only entrusts certain women and men with their care. We also know that kids with down syndrome are sent directly from heaven with sweet spirits and we wouldn't take for granted the opportunity to raise a baby with any chromosomal abnormality.
