A year ago, we found out I was pregnant again and that Brayden was going to be a big brother! We were ecstatic. Truly. Conceiving Brayden was so easy that I think Chris and I just looked at each other the right way and BAM! Little did we expect it to take nine months for our next attempt....But there I was pregnant and so thrilled.
Those who know me well, know that I was dying for a little girl. One of my best friends once told me that she had never met anyone who wanted a girl as badly as I did. One of the happiest days was the day we had our 20 week ultrasound and discovered, to my complete shock, that it was a GIRL! I can still hear the screams from my work friends when I got back to work that day as we shrieked and hugged like a bunch of school girls. From that point it seems as if everything was perfect. My pre-natal screens were great, the level 2 ultrasound showed a healthy baby girl, and I spent the next 17 weeks in baby heaven.
Everything was pink...literally. Light pink, dark pink, hot pink and so on. Life didn't get much better than this: a beautiful perfect little boy, a great husband, and a little girl on the way.
But unfortunately, just like most fairytales, there is always a dark period before the happy ending.
Ours begin on the day we welcomed our precious Sophie into the world...
On March 7, 2011 at 37 weeks, I went into labor. I was still home getting ready for work and figured I was just having some contractions but thought I would wait them out before heading in. Well, 3 hours later with them being less than 2 minutes apart and happening every 5-10 minutes we figured it may be worth heading for the hospital. Good thinking, since I was already 6 cm! I had a momentary lapse of sanity as I considered not getting an epidural, but fortunately it was brief and I regained my senses and went for it. The labor was mostly uneventful, of course everything being relative to Brayden's birth which I still have nightmares about! I pushed for 30 minutes and out came Sophie, it was that easy.
What happened next is a blur in some ways, as shock may be self-preservation from devastation. I remember bits and pieces and in some ways which I remembered none of it, as it was not the happy moment I had been planning for so long, nor does that memory reflect accurately what I see six months later. Sophie was immediately placed on my belly and I remember thinking how beautiful she was. That thought was quickly interrupted as they took her away and started "working" on her. I really had no idea what was happening but could see immediately on Chris's face that something was very wrong, although no one would say exactly what it was. I just assumed that she was having a little trouble breathing or needed some heat, but nothing could prepare me for Chris' next words: "I think she may have down syndrome". That was when the bottom dropped out. In all the worrying I did during my pregnancy, never did I worry about down syndrome. After all, all my tests and screens were normal, right?
There are so many ways to explain what happened next and yet no way to convey the depth of our sadness, or the extent of our devastation. During the next couple of hours that Sophie was gone for umpteen different medical tests based on the suspicion of a down syndrome diagnosis, Chris and I laid in my hospital bed and through all the denial that we held on to, cried at the loss of life as we knew it, the loss of dreams and imagined futures, and the loss of a healthy child.
I could go on and on about it, but honestly, it is all a big blur on some level. Probably self-preservation. Our ability to focus on us was cut short as Sophie was moved to the NICU for the next 10 days because she was unable to maintain her oxygen saturation levels. We spent the next 10 days living in the NICU, trying to be home for Brayden in the evenings and fielding dozens and dozens of specialists. Thankfully our moms were both here to help and take care of everything we could not. The short version is that Sophie is, thankfully, very healthy! She has a small ASD, a small hole in her heart, which we are monitoring and may need to repair in a few years. Considering the possible medical problems (the list is endless) she could have, we felt so fortunate that this was the extent of it.
Through it all, Brayden was our little champion! He is completely and blissfully unaware of Sophie's diagnosis and was and is over-the-moon about his "baby". He loves her ferociously, not always gently, but always with love. He was so proud of his little bundle when he saw her for the first time in the NICU and his visit and happiness at her presence were my first tears of joy and for those tears I will be forever indebted to him.
