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A pregnancy from hell
When our 9-month-old was an infant, he occasionally appeared cross-eyed. It was most noticeable when he was tired or when he was trying to focus on an object. It was also more prominent in his right eye, and at his 2-month check-up, the pediatrician suggested we take him to see an opthamologist. We decided to wait a month or so to see if the problem corrected itself (I'd read that it's perfectly normal at that age to have crossed eyes from time to time). And it did seem to correct itself. By the time he was 4 months old, it was all but gone. But then at his 6-month check-up, the pediatrician looked at the baby's eyes again and said the right eye still appeared to be slightly off-center. So we went ahead and made an appointment to see the opthamologist.
As a mother, of course I was stressed about this. I don't want there to be anything wrong with my baby's vision, and if there is, I don't want him to have to go through uncomfortable tests and treatments.
But I'm also tired of worrying. I've had it with the worrying. With Carson, the worrying started before he was even a newly implanted zygote or whatever, because of my "advanced maternal age" and all, and because I had had a miscarriage two months earlier. And things only got worse. At the 20-week ultrasound, the technician saw some things that I was told were "markers" for Down syndrome or, worse, Trisomy 18. I had to see a specialist, who scared the living daylights out of me and my husband and had us both convinced that we were going to have to abort our baby because he probably had Trisomy 18. If you haven't heard of Trisomy 18, check it out here.
A baby with this disease most likely will die in the womb. If he is one of the "lucky" ones, he will live a few minutes to a few days after birth. Very rarely, a Trisomy 18 baby will make it to early childhood, but it will be a long, complicated and expensive road requiring constant medical care, and virtually no quality of life.
Faced with this, I was a wreck. I was up at night studying my copies of the ultrasound pictures and comparing them with ultrasound pictures online, to try to make my own diagnosis. I spent hours upon hours poring over any information I could find, first on choroid plexus cysts (cysts in the brain, which my baby had); then on enlarged liver (which my baby also had); then on multiple liver calcifications (which my baby also had). I drove myself insane trying to find the one piece of information that would tell me that all these things were normal. But I never found it. I only found the dozens of horrible conditions that would cause these types of problems in utero. Infections that could cause my baby to be born blind, deaf, retarded or all of the above. Defects that could kill my baby. And seeing and hearing about these things was killing me.
I immediately scheduled an amniocentesis. Then came the wait. The amnio could rule out Down Syndrome, and all of the Trisomies or other chromosomal abnormalities. But it could not rule out the numerous infections that might also be the cause of the calcifications and enlarged liver. Still, it was a glorious day when I got the results that my baby boy had 26 perfectly normal chromosomes.
I had to continue to see the specialist once a month for a level-2 ultrasound, which was scary every single time as I watched the doctor take measurements and prayed that things were back to normal, but at the same time it was a bonus – what other pregnant woman gets to see her baby on ultrasound every month of her pregnancy?
By the end of those long nine months of worrying, crying, aching and praying, the specialist had seen that the calcifications never got any worse, the rest of the body grew to catch up with the liver, and the cysts were long gone. He didn't have any answers as to why these things sometimes come up on ultrasound, and he didn't have any guarantees that the baby would be born healthy, but he was no longer worried about the situation. I still was. He had told me that there are many metabollic disorders that, though rare, can manifest themselves in really harmful and scary ways, and those disorders can't be detected until the baby is born and is tested.
Because I was having a second C-section, my baby's birthday was scheduled for two weeks ahead of my due date. Both my husband and I were troubled by conflicting feelings of excitement and fear. What if he was born with one of the horrible conditions the specialist had warned us about? What if he didn't make it? What if the amniocentesis had been wrong? I hadn't really thought about how much I suffered during that pregnancy until I started writing this. From start to finish, it was a rollercoaster of emotions on top of the endless morning sickness and heartburn. Never again do I want to feel the kind of agony I was faced with during that pregnancy. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, either.
Carson was born healthy. He was 8 pounds, 4 ounces of screaming baby boy. The nurses fed him immediately, because he came out screaming so hard for some food! And he's still eating like a champ – he's around 23 pounds already. He has gorgeous blue eyes and a dimply smile that just melts your heart. He has a fuzzy little head of hair and chunky thighs. He loves his toes. He's cuddly and happy and is attracted to long hair. He's a determined explorer, crawling around and barrelling through any obstacle to get where he wants to go. He smiles at everyone, but he really lights up when he sees me and Daddy and his big brother. How could a baby that caused so much trouble in the womb be so perfect now? I cherish every second of holding him – even when it's at 3 a.m. I never want to let him go.
So yeah, I'm tired of worrying. I don't want to worry about his eyes. So one turns in a tad on occasion. He'll be OK. I'm positive he'll be OK.
That's Why We Can't Have Nice Things
I have three kids: a 5-year-old son, an 1-year-old son, and a 37-year-old husband. I'll be publicly making fun of all of them.
When our 9-month-old was an infant, he occasionally appeared cross-eyed. It was most noticeable when he was tired or when he was trying to focus on an object. It was also more prominent in his right eye, and at his 2-month check-up, the pediatrician suggested we take him to see an opthamologist. We decided to wait a month or so to see if the problem corrected itself (I'd read that it's perfectly normal at that age to have crossed eyes from time to time). And it did seem to correct itself. By the time he was 4 months old, it was all but gone. But then at his 6-month check-up, the pediatrician looked at the baby's eyes again and said the right eye still appeared to be slightly off-center. So we went ahead and made an appointment to see the opthamologist.
As a mother, of course I was stressed about this. I don't want there to be anything wrong with my baby's vision, and if there is, I don't want him to have to go through uncomfortable tests and treatments.
But I'm also tired of worrying. I've had it with the worrying. With Carson, the worrying started before he was even a newly implanted zygote or whatever, because of my "advanced maternal age" and all, and because I had had a miscarriage two months earlier. And things only got worse. At the 20-week ultrasound, the technician saw some things that I was told were "markers" for Down syndrome or, worse, Trisomy 18. I had to see a specialist, who scared the living daylights out of me and my husband and had us both convinced that we were going to have to abort our baby because he probably had Trisomy 18. If you haven't heard of Trisomy 18, check it out here.
A baby with this disease most likely will die in the womb. If he is one of the "lucky" ones, he will live a few minutes to a few days after birth. Very rarely, a Trisomy 18 baby will make it to early childhood, but it will be a long, complicated and expensive road requiring constant medical care, and virtually no quality of life.
Faced with this, I was a wreck. I was up at night studying my copies of the ultrasound pictures and comparing them with ultrasound pictures online, to try to make my own diagnosis. I spent hours upon hours poring over any information I could find, first on choroid plexus cysts (cysts in the brain, which my baby had); then on enlarged liver (which my baby also had); then on multiple liver calcifications (which my baby also had). I drove myself insane trying to find the one piece of information that would tell me that all these things were normal. But I never found it. I only found the dozens of horrible conditions that would cause these types of problems in utero. Infections that could cause my baby to be born blind, deaf, retarded or all of the above. Defects that could kill my baby. And seeing and hearing about these things was killing me.
I immediately scheduled an amniocentesis. Then came the wait. The amnio could rule out Down Syndrome, and all of the Trisomies or other chromosomal abnormalities. But it could not rule out the numerous infections that might also be the cause of the calcifications and enlarged liver. Still, it was a glorious day when I got the results that my baby boy had 26 perfectly normal chromosomes.
I had to continue to see the specialist once a month for a level-2 ultrasound, which was scary every single time as I watched the doctor take measurements and prayed that things were back to normal, but at the same time it was a bonus – what other pregnant woman gets to see her baby on ultrasound every month of her pregnancy?
By the end of those long nine months of worrying, crying, aching and praying, the specialist had seen that the calcifications never got any worse, the rest of the body grew to catch up with the liver, and the cysts were long gone. He didn't have any answers as to why these things sometimes come up on ultrasound, and he didn't have any guarantees that the baby would be born healthy, but he was no longer worried about the situation. I still was. He had told me that there are many metabollic disorders that, though rare, can manifest themselves in really harmful and scary ways, and those disorders can't be detected until the baby is born and is tested.
Because I was having a second C-section, my baby's birthday was scheduled for two weeks ahead of my due date. Both my husband and I were troubled by conflicting feelings of excitement and fear. What if he was born with one of the horrible conditions the specialist had warned us about? What if he didn't make it? What if the amniocentesis had been wrong? I hadn't really thought about how much I suffered during that pregnancy until I started writing this. From start to finish, it was a rollercoaster of emotions on top of the endless morning sickness and heartburn. Never again do I want to feel the kind of agony I was faced with during that pregnancy. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, either.
Carson was born healthy. He was 8 pounds, 4 ounces of screaming baby boy. The nurses fed him immediately, because he came out screaming so hard for some food! And he's still eating like a champ – he's around 23 pounds already. He has gorgeous blue eyes and a dimply smile that just melts your heart. He has a fuzzy little head of hair and chunky thighs. He loves his toes. He's cuddly and happy and is attracted to long hair. He's a determined explorer, crawling around and barrelling through any obstacle to get where he wants to go. He smiles at everyone, but he really lights up when he sees me and Daddy and his big brother. How could a baby that caused so much trouble in the womb be so perfect now? I cherish every second of holding him – even when it's at 3 a.m. I never want to let him go.
So yeah, I'm tired of worrying. I don't want to worry about his eyes. So one turns in a tad on occasion. He'll be OK. I'm positive he'll be OK.
Comments
Cheryl,
I, too, went thru the T-18 nightmare. My 3rd child showed bi-lateral choroid plexus cysts at his 16 week US. Add that to the spots on the bowel...well, I had an US every month too. At each one they found resolution to one issue only to find a problem with another.
Ryan was my fastest delivery (15 minutes of pushing vs. 3 and a half hours), and he was my only child of my 4 to not have to go to the NICU or special care nursery. Once he came out I was relieved, of course, because it was over. But the news from the nurse that he was perfect and didn't need to be whisked away to NICU was what brought my first tears of joy.
I honlstly think that sometimes all the pre-natal testing visits more fears upon moms-to-be than they need.
Thanks, sheilab. It's nice to hear from someone who went through the same thing I did! You don't know how hard I tried to find others who were in the same boat at the time, and I never could. So has Ryan had any troubles whatsoever? I keep wondering whether we're going to find out one day that Carson has liver problems.
When he was 4 or 5 months old, he had to have an US done and they found fluid on his kidneys. It was called hydronephrosis, but it resolved on its own by 10 months.
He does have asthma, but I don't attribute that to the pregnancy, my older son has it, and so does my youngest.
I also remember seeking out choroid plexus cyst sites and everything. The gave me a bit of hope, but also came with scary info. Sometimes the internet can be a curse; we have so much info available at our fingertips but not always all of the knowledge to process it as it pertains to us!
I am pregnant now with my 5th, and 36. So of course I am paranoid about the "advanced age" thing. After what happened with Ry, I'm just trying to keep all negativity out of my head until I have something concrete to fret over! I haven't even had my first US yet with this baby. I guess I'll wait till then to worry if need be!