Playful Rooted

Here’s how this story goes:

You’re eighteen weeks pregnant. You’ve been grouchy about it the whole time, the nausea, the heartburn, the aches and pains, the maternity clothes. It’s been hard, really hard, this time.

And then! You start feeling kicks. Sweet, little baby movements. The kicks and rolls and punches that make pregnancy so worth it, so joyful. All of it is now okay. It’s worth all the hard.

You’re excited. For the first time since finding out you were pregnant, you’re really, truly excited. You can feel this precious life inside of you. It’s surreal and wonderful. You let yourself imagine what this baby looks like. Who this baby will be. You start gathering newborn clothes and planning what you’ll do to decorate the nursery.

At each midwife appointment, everything looks great. You’ve gained just the right amount of weight. Your uterus is measuring just where it should be. Your bloodwork came back fine. The doppler picks up the baby’s heartbeat immediately; it’s strong and fast and perfect.

You schedule your 20-week anatomy scan.

You tell your husband the date and time over and over again just to make sure he knows when it is.

You’re excited. You can’t wait to see your baby. To see the gender right there on the big screen. To have your big boys see their baby sibling and marvel at how this tiny human being is growing inside mommy, just like they did.

And there she is. It’s a she! Just what you’ve hoped for this time! A daughter! A sister!

She has all the body parts she should. She has hands and feet and arms and legs and a spine and a head and a face. You can see her moving around in there; you match the movements on the screen to the ones you’ve been feeling inside you for weeks. It’s a miracle. It’s miraculous.

The ultrasound tech

is

suspiciously

quiet.

But you’re so thrilled to finally see this precious little person. You don’t really read much into it. Some people just aren’t super chatty.

The ultrasound tech says she’s all done. She prints photos for you to take home. She says the doctor will look things over and send the report to the midwife, who will then touch base with you. You don’t think anything of this, either, since that’s what they’ve always said at every ultrasound you’ve ever had. And everything looked healthy and normal to you on the screen. Just like your older kids looked. So you’re not worried. You expect the midwife to call you in a day or two.

Less than an hour later, you get a call.

The midwife is concerned. There are some markers on your ultrasound that she wants further checked out. She describes what they found, and she says that SOMETIMES this CAN indicate a chromosomal abnormality. She tells you not to worry. Everything could still be okay. Try to relax. Tomorrow morning, you can schedule a second-level ultrasound to take a closer look.

You spend the night Googling. Crying. Convincing yourself that it’s not that bad. Just because these things COULD indicate a problem doesn’t mean that they will. Often, things end up totally fine! It’s going to be fine!

You call to schedule a second-level ultrasound at 8:01 AM the next morning. The office is super annoyed with you and must hear from your midwife before they’ll schedule anything. You call and beg your midwife to contact them ASAP. You wait, filled with anxiety, for hours until they FINALLY call you to schedule an appointment for two days later.

You spend the next 48 hours waiting. Trying to be present for your older kids who need you. Praying. Worrying. Convincing yourself that everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.

The appointment time comes. You sit in the waiting room with your husband, feeling like you’re going to throw up. And at the same time, you’re joking and laughing with him because everything’s fine. Of course it is.

Then you walk in.

Soon, your baby, your girl, is on the screen in front of you.

The first thing the ultrasound tech says is, “Yes, I see it.”

Yes
I
See
It.

And you know.

She sees what you’ve spent two days begging God for her not to see. She sees the malformations. She sees the abnormalities. How can she possibly see it?

It’s everything your midwife walked you through.

And it’s more. It’s so much more.

Everything is not okay.

It’s a nuchal fold that is too large. It’s fingers that haven’t formed right. It’s an umbilical cord that only has one artery instead of the normal two. And it keeps getting worse. It’s two portions of the brain that are too large and another part of the brain that she just doesn’t see there at all. It’s kidneys that are both too big, and there’s some kind of blockage in the renal system. It’s copies of things that shouldn’t be there. It’s a gap between the chambers of your baby’s tiny, precious, beating heart.

It’s a probable diagnosis (because without testing of the amniotic fluid, they have to say that). But she’s sure. You ask whether this could be anything else, and never in 30 years of practice has she seen it be anything else. It’s a chromosomal defect. It can’t be cured. It won’t go away. It won’t get better. No one can predict how this will go. How long she will live. What other problems she might have. What her quality of life could possibly be like.

You leave in a daze. You and your husband hold each other, weeping, in the hall as people walk by and pretend not to notice.

You drive to your sister’s house to pick up your kids. Sawyer is in bed asleep, and you go in and stare at his chubby face. His beautiful, healthy body. You touch his little toes and his ears and his elbows and his lips. You saw this little body on an ultrasound, too. You felt his kicks inside of you. You carried his beating heart.

And it feels the same.

The kicks feel the same. It all feels the same. Exactly the same.

It’s excruciating how the same it feels when it is, in fact, so different.

It’s excruciating. But you’re also numb. You’re shattered. You’re destroyed. You’re split wide open. The word for this doesn’t exist. And somehow at the same time, you can’t feel anything at all.

And as you sit here, typing this, you realize that your face is wet with tears, but you don’t really remember the difference between crying and not crying anymore. And surely you must be writing about someone else’s story because this one couldn’t possibly be yours. This must have happened to some other mother. So sad. The poor thing. But it couldn’t be you.

It just couldn’t be.

It just can’t be.