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I have added in this post a letter from a guy in my church concerning his wife and baby. The names have been taken out for their privacy, but please remember to lift this family up in your prayers. I find it very difficult to be pregnant with all of the what-ifs and I cannot imagine what this family is going through.
I would like to ask all of you to pray for our daughter. My wife has been in the hospital pretty much every day this week. They were going to discharge her today, but they noticed some things during the ultrasound that have caused some concern. There are basically three issues that they are monitoring.
The first one is that our daughter has an obstruction in her lower intestine that is preventing her from fully processing the amniotic fluid that she ingests. She cannot expel it. This is causing the fluid to buildup inside of her. Our daughter's inability to process this fluid is also causing my wife to go into pre-term labor because the fluid continues to build up creating more pressure than she (or the baby) should be experiencing at this point in the pregnancy. Now, that the doctors are aware of the situation they are able to mitigate the fluid build-up (in my wife-- not the baby) by draining the fluid when necessary. Our daughter will need surgery as soon as she is born to remove the obstruction and repair any effected areas. After the surgery, she could be in ICU for around six weeks while she recovers.
The second issue is that normal umbilical cords have three veins. Our baby's umbilical cord has two. I'm sure that this could affect how much nutrition the baby receives, but there isn't much that they can do about that. The doctors did tell us that there is an increased chance of the baby being stillborn as a result of this abnormality.
The third issue is that our daughters long bones (her thigh bones and upper arms) are not as long as they should be for a 30 week old baby. They said that she looks like she's running a couple of weeks behind. This could be a side-effect of the missing vein in the umbilical cord or it could be that she's just short.
Now, any one of these single issues by themselves are certainly cause for concern, but the doctors seem to believe that they are able to manage each of these situations. The tough part comes when you have all of these issues together because each of them is also a marker for Down's Syndrome.
They are doing tests in hopes of obtaining a more definitive answer, but they have said that they will not know for certain until the baby is actually born. There are two tests that they will be doing. One is a screen type test that will give us an answer within 48 hours; the other test is more in-depth and we should have the results from that test within 10 days. The problem with both of these tests, as I understand it, is that it is possible to get false negatives or positives from both tests. That's why the doctor's can't say definitively whether or not she will have Down's Syndrome until she is actually right there in front of them.
Obviously, every baby is special to every parent, and in the scheme of things my wife and I are no different from anyone else. However, in our minds, we like to think that our baby is a little different because she wasn't supposed to be possible.
My wife and I have been trying to have a child for over three years. My wife has some conditions that have made it very difficult for her to have a child. We were (and still are) so surprised when God answered our prayer and brought DD into our lives. Like every parent, we have hopes, dreams, and ambitions for that little unborn child. I pray that the doctor's initial fears are wrong. I pray that test results (we do not currently know what those results will indicate) won't matter. I pray that God will give us a healthy, normal little girl. I ask that you would join me in that prayer.
We will continue to love DD even if she does have Down's syndrome. I'm not sure how that will change those dreams, but I am sure that if God does bring that into our lives that He will also bring new dreams for us to share with her.
We are shocked, saddened, and afraid, but we are also certain that God, who gave us this little girl, knows best. It sounds so trite and cliched, until you actually find yourself in a position to type those words. A time when you have to evaluate whether you really mean them or not. We do. We don't want to hurt or to endure some of the possibilities now before us, but ultimately those things are issues that God has to worry about-- not us.
All that being said, please join us in trying to persuade God to come around to our point of view. Boy, that's a contradiction to my previous paragraph, isn't it?
Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking things about the entire episode is the fact that the doctor's have put DW on bed rest. This is very traumatic for me because it means that I will have to refill my own drinks, cook things, and just do all the the little things that she normally does for me. The horror! And , I realize that you might be tempted to organize volunteers to bring meals to our home and stuff like that, but you should know that I'm an even pickier eater than  . I laugh at and his liberal attitude of eating whatever is set before him! |
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