bethysmalls

I haven’t talked much about this on this space but I’m pregnant with my second and I’m having an awful time. I mean, I had been having a fine time but at our 20 week ultrasound a cleft lip and palate was discovered and I was shocked and upset. We were scheduled at that point for a fetal echo the following week to examine the heart more closely. This is routine apparently as there was nothing thought to be wrong with the heart. They did mention that they couldn’t get a good view of the baby’s hands and that they would check it again at the echo. One anomaly is one thing. Two anomalies is quite another. That’s what they told us.

The echo part went smoothly but they continued to be concerned about the hands because they wouldn’t open up to get a good picture which, along with the cleft, can indicate Trisomy 13 or 18. Also a smaller cleft was observed on the other side of the face which is also more of a red flag.

I know this isn’t the normal kind of post on here but I’m really struggling and I just don’t even know what to do with myself. I guess I’m just really needing some solidarity.

Last week I thought I would be dealing with feeding issues and plastic surgery and now I have to contemplate not bringing home a baby at all. I know I need to be prepared for any possible outcome but I don’t even know what is preferable at this point. I mean obviously I’d be thrilled to take my baby home and deal with the cleft palate and lip and learning how to breastfeed a baby with a cleft palate but after that, every other scenario comes in at a distant, distant last.

We might know if the baby has a Trisomy syndrome on Monday but due to the mosaic forms of those disorders we could get a false negative. So.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 8th, 2011 at 8:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.