I was a good student – honors, straight As, teacher’s pet, whatever. But not in the subjects I didn’t like, particularly the sciences. I just didn’t see the point and it wasn’t creative or artsy enough for me, so I barely passed in those subjects, or I failed altogether. Now I wish I had paid better attention and learned more.
Today, for a split second, I really wished I’d paid more attention in school.
A little background to this story first. My youngest daughter (at age 28) is pregnant. This was a completely unplanned pregnancy for her and her life situation isn’t what one would call ideal – she’s single, unable to work, lives at home with me, and has a lot of her own health issues. This is also a young woman who nearly had to have a hysterectomy at around 24, so we really never thought a baby was going to happen for her. So, for her to be pregnant now comes as both a blessing and a concern. To top things off, she was on a lot of medications, including narcotic pain killers, before she learned she was pregnant, so her baby and pregnancy is considered high risk.
She’s lucky however because she has her older sister and me to be by her side throughout all of this, and her sister lives only 20 minutes from us. After her first visit with the baby doctor, she was referred to a genetics counselor and a perinatologist to determine the effects of her medications on the fetus. She was told what medications she absolutely had to discontinue (which she did) and the rest were determined not to cause any birth defects to the baby. All the ultrasounds and tests came out fine and baby was growing normally. We were feeling confident and hopeful.
Until Tuesday. Tuesday, my daughter got the results from the full genetic screening and was told that she was high risk for having a Down Syndrome baby – odds of 1:74. Normal odds are 1:1,000. We were crushed. We didn’t expect this and we really didn’t know what it meant. We had to wait 24 hours before we could get in to speak in person with the doctors and genetic counselor to learn more. Meanwhile, my way of coping was to search and glean as much education as I could about the subject.
Yesterday in the genetic counselor’s office, she asks the three of us (my daughters and me), “You know what chromosomes look like, right?” They both instantly nod yes, I nodded no. Seriously. I didn’t immediately know and if you’d asked me how many chromosomes there are in the body that make up whatever, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t have been able to explain how there’s one from mommy, one from daddy in each pair.
Well, it didn’t matter anyway because she went on to explain to us how this worked. Essentially, what they needed to look for with my daughter is if there is a third marker (is that the right term?) in the 21st chromosome. If yes, baby has Down Syndrome, without a doubt. If no, baby is normal. Also, in the final chromosome, they’d be able to identify if baby is a boy or girl. (Woohooo!)
However, before she had this test, we learned more about what caused her risk for Down Syndrome to go so high. Her HCG hormone was very high and another one was lower than they expected to see. They think it’s very possible that some of this is from her “wonky” placenta, which will be watched closely throughout this pregnancy. But they couldn’t be sure, so therefore it raised her risk higher. On top of all this we learned that regardless of Down Syndrome or not, the baby is high risk and will definitely be spending time in the NICU after delivery because of the medications my daughter is on. The only question is for how long.
All this talk about hormones, placentas, chromosomes and such made me realize that really I should have paid better attention – if they even taught this stuff in school. When I was having babies they didn’t look at any of this stuff with me. I’m so grateful I had healthy babies. I’m peeking in to the world of what it is like for parents (and extended families) who have babies with complications of any sort. It is all so scary, stressful, educational, and eye-opening. I have realized just how blessed my family has been so far to have healthy babies, no catastrophic life issues really at all, and how much I’ve taken for granted. I’m peeking in to the world of special needs babies, and although my heart has gone out (sincerely) to parents who live in this world, it is an area I had hoped I’d never have to experience personally. But the bottom line is that I know this baby is a gift to our family. We will be blessed to have this child join our lives and we will all be stronger for it one way or another. I am also of the very firm belief that God never gives us more than we can handle.
I hope to be able to blog about this as we go through the journey because my daughter’s story (and mine, as it relates to my daughter) is about life and dealing with life on life’s terms – and this blog is all about life, the rhythm of life, its ups and downs, trials and tribulations, joys and sorrows.
Thanks for listening.
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