Remembering Faith Elizabeth

Remembering Faith Elizabeth

Monday, July 12, 2010

Summer

Summer is half over - which is very hard to believe. I've done virtually nothing to get ready for the school year - which isn't so hard to believe. I know that the time will come to do that, but right now, I'm enjoying the time off. In fact, I've decided that if we win the lottery, I could definitely enjoy that life. I would, of course, have to find some way to be a little more productive, but I would manage.

July has been a bit difficult. It is the month when everything changed last year - the beginning of the roller coaster that our life has become. Last year, on July 7 (our anniversary), we went in for a follow-up ultrasound, knowing some things were wrong. I had sensed from the beginning of the pregnancy that something was "off," but I was a first-time mom and had nothing to compare it to, so I just wrote it off as that. So, we sat with the perinatologist as we looked at our baby on the screen and he said, "I see a hole in the baby's heart. I want you to see a pediatric cardiologist to confirm it." I laid on the ultrasound table and proceeded to burst into tears. We were shuffled to the cardiologist's office, who confirmed that our baby had a ventricular septal defect (VSD) and went through all it could mean. Then we shuffled back to talk to a genetic counselor who recommended an amnio, which we set up for the next day. We went home and cried and prayed our baby didn't have Down's Syndrome, the likely problem all the doctors thought we could be dealing with. We decided that July 7, 2009 will be the worst anniversary we ever have.

July 8 we had an amnio. Jamie sat and held my hand and the doctor told us, "If you come back positive for a chromosomal abnormality, you will be the first I've ever seen that has that and had normal bloodwork." We left that day with a little bit of hope. I'm pretty sure that we're written up in some medical journal somewhere.

July 9 is my birthday, and last year I went to work and had a normal day trying to wait out the longest days of my life.

July 10 I went to work again. I came home from work and had barely walked in the house when our phone rang. Jamie was working at a friend's house about 40 minutes away. The genetic counselor said, "It's postivie for Trisomy 18." I literally fell to my couch as she asked if we knew anything about it. I told her, "We've been told babies with it don't survive." She said, "Yes. That is usually the case. I am so sorry." I fell apart and I think I hung up on her. Then I paced my living room, hysterically trying to figure out what to do next. I called Jamie and simply told him I needed him to come home - right now. Which, of course, he did - knowing something was wrong. And then I called my poor parents, who live six hours away in Ohio. I didn't want to tell anyone before I told Jamie, so I called them. Catatonic, hysterical, barely able to speak, my dad answered the phone, got my mom - he called my best friend, Sarah, that lives a few miles away. She swooped up their 2-year old and was in my house in a matter of moments. Together, we cried and cried and she simply held me in her lap until Jamie got home. And then I told him.

We made a few phone calls - to Jamie's parents and older sister, all of whom arrived to spend the evening with us. My parents dropped everything and drove into town, where they stayed for the next week. Mom went to the doctor with us the next time to discuss what happened next.

July was not a fun month for us last year. This year, our anniversary was better. We spent it floating the Jacks Fork river in southern Missouri with family and actually enjoyed ourselves. My thoughts this week have been filled with reliving moments, as I'm sure the next month or so will be. It is not easy to do, but it is what life is about.

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