I am way overdue in making this post...where to begin....
Quad-screening - we opted to do the quad screen at the doctor's office at our 15 week visit. (for those who aren't familliar, the quad screen is a screening test for four common chromosomal abnormalities including downs syndrome and spinabifidia.) I am not exactly sure why we decided to do the screen - i think we just wanted something to be "right" in our pregnancy. Well, the song that states, "there is a first time for everything" wasn't accurate in this case. The screening didn't come back "right" - rather it showed that i had a 1 in 25 chance of our baby having downs syndrome. The typical odds based on my age would be 1 in 725. So 1 in 25 was rather elevated.
So the next step was to be referred to a perinatologist (high risk OB) - we had to wait an agonizing week for the appointment. Our OB prepared us for the appt - we would meet with a genetic counselor, be given an ultrasound and have the option for an amniocentesis. The appointment went basically like was described to me. The genetic counselor immediately put me more at ease - after reveiwing my records and asking us some family history questions, she said, i really don't think you have anything to worry about. We then met the doctor and had the ultrasound - to our relief, they saw no "markers" for down syndrome - this took our odds to 1 in 50. We had decided early on that we would go through with the amnio - I had to be prepared for whatever God had planned for us - i am a planner!! We did the amnio - it wouldn't have been that bad except our doc didn't use the right length needle and therefore, she had to stick me twice! I thought dear husband was going to kill her! Like there is not enough stress over going through with the procedure. Oh yeah, and then miss doctor let the needle come out before extracting enough fluid for the amnio and the FISH test (which is a speedy version of the amnio - results in two days!) So two sticks and had to wait the full two weeks, great, this is going swimmingly. Finally, we were done and on our way.
It was a long two week wait - i got rather sick in the middle of it - Stuck in bed with a fever and head cold. I got the results about 10 days after the procedure and to my utter relief, the chromosomes in our baby girl looked perfect! OH yeah, we are having a girl!!
Of course, that isn't quite the end. In the weeks following the amnio and being sick, my pregnancy symptoms changed a bit and i was yet to feel those first signs of movement. So i went through a couple week period where i was convinced that something was wrong with the baby - in my mind, likely a result of the poking and prodding from the amnio! For a while, I tried to ignore it, then i would have gone to the doctor for a check, but we had a week long ice / snow storm that shut our town down. So it wasn't until yestserday that I was able to get in and finally get a check on the heartbeat. It was a stressful minute or two as the nurse was poking around with the doppler. I guess the baby was moving alot because a heartbeat would be detected but then fade to nothing - and i wasn't sure if it was my heartbeat they she is moving around alot in there - and i was like, so the heartbeat was good - you would think they would provide this type of information ASAP to a clearly anxious mom-to-be! Sheesh! The doctor was much more compassionate and acknowledged that I am not their typical patient (given all i have been through to get here) and I shouldn't be afraid to come in as often as makes me comfortable. It made me love Dr. D even more than i already did (if that is even posssible)! So I think until i start to feel movement, i am going to pop in their weekly for what they call a fetal tone test (basically listening to the heartbeat).
So in a nutshell, that has been my weeks 15 through 20 of my pregnancy. I will say that going through the scare with the screening test was a true test of my faith and I am happy to report that my faith won out. Both husband and I discussed that we could deal with whatever God had planned for us and it might not be what we had envisioned or what we had "planned" but it was still God's gift to us and we would cherish it. I had come to a surprising sense of acceptance with the whole predicament by the time our appointment rolled around. I do believe everything happens for a reason, and God wanted us to experience this bump in the road for a reason. All I know is I feel like i have endured it all in preparing to welcome this little girl into our lives - I know i will never take her for granted or wish for anything else. She is our destiny - we can't wait to meet her - I know she will be such a special gift!
