At the doctor's office, they promptly took us back and began the ultrasound. It is amazing how fast babies grow! She had gone from a little peanut with almost nothing but a head and chest to this adorable thing with wiggling arms and legs. We laughed at her antics and the nurse said she thought it was a girl but was not sure because she was moving too much. I couldn't believe how amazing she was, and I was so distracted with her that it took me a while to notice that the nurse was not saying very much, nor was she smiling. She kept flipping through my chart, then looking back to the screen, then flipping through my chart again. Chris asked if everything was all right, and she did not respond. Then, she said that she was going to have the doctor look at the ultrasound photos. My heart felt like it dropped through my chest. I couldn't breathe. How could there be something wrong? She looked perfect.
They ended up sending us to the hospital where they have better equipment, and they still hadn't told us anything. They said there were "problems" with the baby, but they wouldn't explain anything until the specialist had looked at her. My thoughts were running wild. I began praying, and I thought to myself that it was all right if she had birth defects. God made her exactly the way He wanted her, and I was going to love her no matter what. I was not prepared at all for what the doctor's told us.
The second ultrasound lasted for about an hour, again with silence from the nurse. She left the room, then came back and said the doctor and the genetic specialist were on their way to see us. They began to list everything that was wrong with my sweet girl. Her heart was highly abnormal, the two sides of her brain were not connected, her liver was enlarged, her kidneys were abnormal. . .the list just kept going. At some point I went completely numb, and I only got bits and pieces of what the doctor was saying. I heard things like "these conditions will be fatal", "you should consider termination", "gestational trophoblastic disease". . .I had to concentrate to keep breathing. Was this really happening? I felt like I had just walked into a nightmare.
This was definitely the hardest day of my life. Yes, it was even harder than the day that we said goodbye to her, but it is also where the joy starts. On the way home, I was crying so hard it is really a miracle that I made it home. I was crying out to the Lord, "Why?!? How could you let this happen?!?" I felt the arms of Jesus wrap around me like I never have before, and He whispered to my heart, "I won't leave you." I knew then that this was not going to be easy at all, but I trusted that He had a plan.
I will end this post with a quote from a book that I was reading when all of this was happening. "We tend to look at the circumstances of life in terms of what they may do to our cherished hopes and convenience, and we shape our decisions and reactions accordingly. When a problem threatens, we rush to God, not to seek his perspective, but to ask him to deflect the trouble. Our self - concern takes priority over whatever it is that God might be trying to do through the trouble. . . " - Arthur Mathews
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