It is with such an anxious spirit that I write this post. I've been dreading this day coming for a couple of months now. I mean, I really have felt so much more emotional lately, and I think it's because of this "anniversary."
One year ago today, we were heading to the doctor to find out the gender of our baby. I was 18 weeks along and finally feeling better than I had been. The first trimester of this pregnancy was really rough. I actually remember saying to Matt one day in the car, "I don't think I can do this again."
We both felt like it was a girl. Or maybe we just really wanted a girl, so we were being positive. I did think that because I was so much more sick than I was with Parker, and because the heartbeat was pretty high at 14 weeks (172 bpm).
We had to go to another office for the big ultrasound, and then we would head downstairs to my doctor's office to go over the scans. As soon as the jelly was squeezed out onto my belly and the wand was waving around, I noticed something; the baby wasn't moving. And there was a big, black spot on the screen. The ultrasound technician asked me if I had been leaking fluid. I told her I hadn't. I said, "The baby isn't really moving." She agreed and told me it worried her. When I asked her what the big, black spot on the screen was, she told me it was amniotic fluid.
Ok, now I'm confused.
She told us that we needed to go ahead and head downstairs and see our doctor. As we were walking downstairs I thought that maybe I was having some issues with amniotic fluid. I told Matt that it worried me because usually that means you have to be on bedrest, and how would we make that work? Can you tell that I didn't really realize how severe the problems were? I don't know how or why, but I wasn't really freaked out yet.
We barely sat down in the waiting room when the nurse came to get us. We walked into the room and there was our doctor, waiting for us.
I sat down, and I remember her patting my knee. She told us that things don't look good. It seems like there may be a cyst inside the baby. I started crying, trying to understand what that means. I told her it made me nervous to find out what was wrong, and she told me, "Me too." That's when I knew things were really, really bad. She told us that they had set up an appointment with a perinatologist later that afternoon, and hopefully we could get some more answers.
As we left that office, I remember that there were no hysterics. Not much crying. Just a lot of shock. We walked to a quiet end of the hallway, and made some calls. The bad thing about us going in for the gender ultrasound is that when people saw that we were calling them, they picked up excitedly, wanting to hear the gender. I called my mom and explained what I knew. Which wasn't much. We called our friend Linda, because she was ready and waiting to find out the gender so she could make cupcakes for us to announce the gender that afternoon at work. Matt called my office, to tell them I wouldn't be coming back in that day.
It seemed to take forever for us to get in with the perinatologist. Even after waiting 2.5 hours for the scheduled appointment time, we still had to wait another 1.5 hours in the waiting room. Once we finally got in and started looking at the baby on the big-screen ultrasound, it really didn't look good. There was a heartbeat. But no movement. And a really big, black circle in the middle of the screen. The doctor explained to us that it wasn't a cyst we were looking at on the screen. The big, black circle was the baby's bladder, full of urine.
Here's a bit of a confession: Matt and I didn't know that amniotic fluid was basically just the baby's pee. Babies pee into the pregnancy sac, then drink it, process it, and pee it out again. One big, interesting cycle. And a cycle that our baby was unable to do.
So, the doctor explained to us that it looked like there was a blockage somewhere that was keeping our baby from peeing. Because the bladder was so swollen, they still were unable to see everything they wanted to see. Including the gender of the baby.
The doctor then gave us some options. They could do a bladder draw that day on the baby, to help find out what was going on. But I would also need a CVS draw on the placenta to see if there were any chromosomal abnormalities that were causing these issues. She told us it was up to us, but that there were some doctors in Houston that dealt with these kind of issues often and would be able to do all of the testing needed. She left the room and Matt and I just stared at each other.
Was this really happening?
We decided pretty quickly that we would go to Houston. We would fight for this baby and do everything we could to preserve their life.
We came home and packed up our things as quickly as we could. We had no idea how long we would be in Houston, so we were just tossing things left and right, hoping it would be enough. We stopped by the local CVS Pharmacy to have the Ambien that my doctor wisely prescribed to me that day filled. I am so glad we took the time to do that, because it ended up being invaluable. I was a wreck and needed something to help me get some rest.
We pulled into my brother's driveway in Katy around 11:00 pm. My face and eyes were puffy from crying. I remember that my face literally hurt that day, and for the next week. We put Parker down on the air mattress in Samuel's room, and then went straight to bed. There was nothing left to do but rest and prepare for a full day of doctor's appointments.
{To be continued...}
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