13 weeks 5 days pregnant
David and I were having a good day preparing for our New Year's Eve party with close friends. Drew, our three year-old son, was off to have a spend the night with his Mimi and Pop Pop and we had just gone to Waffle House (pregnancy craving!) for lunch. We were heading back home to finish up our party preparations and to take a much needed nap (because at 13 weeks pregnant I was still SO TIRED!). We were driving down the road to our house when my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but I thought I better answer it since we were waiting to hear from our doctor about the test results.
It was our perinatologist calling. I couldn't believe he was calling at 1pm on New Year's Eve. He got right to the point and told me that our blood test came back abnormal for Trisomy 13. The blood test combined with the abnormal ultrasound put us at a 90% risk for Trisomy 13.
I had to make David pull the car over. I could barely breathe. I could not believe that the doctor was telling me this. Honestly, I didn't even know what Trisomy 13 was...when I googled the Trisomy conditions that we were being tested for, I skipped over Trisomy 18 and 13 because they were SO RARE! No way that could be us. We were more prepared to hear that our baby had Trisomy 21, which is Down Syndrome...but not Trisomy 13. He also told us that our baby was a "male"...I didn't like that wording...it's like when they call your baby who has a beating heart and is moving around inside you a "fetus"...it seems to de-sensitize the whole situation.
The doctor suggested that we meet with a genetic counselor. We decided to drive down to Northside Hospital and hope that we could meet with the counselor that day. As we were driving we were furiously googling the condition and getting more and more upset. We called our family and told them that we had bad news but we didn't really know what it meant yet...but we shared the good and surprising news with them that our baby was a boy.
By the Grace of God, the genetic counselor found time to meet with us. She was a very kind and compassionate woman who took so much time with us explaining what Trisomy 13 was and meant for our baby. She went into all of the abnormalities that would likely plague our boy and that the condition is fatal. Most babies, if they make it to birth, live for a median of four days. She said that the only way to confirm 100% would be to have an amniocentesis. She was gracious enough to get that scheduled for us two weeks later. We asked her if she had ever seen an amnio come back and say that there was nothing wrong with the baby after having the abnormal blood test and ultrasound...she said "no". Our hearts were broken.
We returned to our car (after much searching since we couldn't remember where we parked in the parking garage)...I told David that we had to choose a name for our sweet baby boy. It's not something we needed to decide that day, but it was something that we needed to do soon.
We drove home and continued to prepare for the party that we were hosting that night. Our good friends who were co-hosting with offered to have us move the party to their home, but we felt like we had to move forward and keep some normalcy...everything was ready to go, I just had to cook a little - which is therapeutic for me! We didn't tell anyone else about what happened that day, we just wanted everyone to enjoy themselves...and we welcomed the distraction.
We couldn't believe what was happening, but we took some comfort in the fact that we knew this was God's plan for us and for our sweet baby boy...