Pregnant with Emma
I had a pretty easy pregnancy with Emma. Had the usual symptoms, but nothing to complain about. At my 20-week ultrasound, the technician told us that our baby was going to be a girl! We were so excited! Later that same day, we received a call from one of the midwives. The doctor had reviewed by ultrasound images and found some problems. Apparently, the baby’s kidney’s had fluid in them, the legs weren’t developing correctly, and she had club feet. We had to go to a high-risk pregnancy clinic in Tacoma at Franciscan Health for more testing. We had wondered what is wrong and why is this happening? And what does this all mean? We won’t know how to help until we go to that appointment.
When we did get to go to the high-risk appointment, they did an in-depth ultrasound. The doctor did his own scan, and he confirmed what we had found before. He had also found that her chin was underdeveloped. The doctor seemed super concerned about her being down syndrome (which she doesn’t have any mental setbacks now!). He urged us to abort. I was (and still is!) appalled that it was cause to abort in his eyes. He then did an amniocentesis- a needle in my uterus to draw out some amniotic fluid. The tests would be chromosomal and to tell us better about the down syndrome question. That actually hurt pretty bad, but I wanted to know. Looking back, I wish I wouldn’t have done it. Two weeks later, the doctor called and said she didn’t have down syndrome, but that the chromosomes gave some other results. First off, he said that she could have some mental slowness and seizers (according to the chromosomes), which is totally off now. The second piece of information he told us is that the chromosomes came back as xy, so he said we were having a boy. That was a shock! We will find out later why Emma isn’t a boy! That was the only time we went to Franciscan, and thankfully the last. The rest of the pregnancy went well.