When I was pregnant for the first time, Rich and I were so excited to have our “big ultrasound” so we could find out if the baby was a boy or a girl. We scheduled the scan for 16 weeks, close to the earliest they would allow us to come, so we could find out sooner. We spent hours discussing our guesses, and how our lives would look either way. At no point in our preparations did we think about the possibility of bad news at the ultrasound. The only bad thing we thought of was the possibility that the technician wouldn’t get a good look and we would have to wait the pregnancy out to “find out.”

As circumstances would have it, the tech did have a hard time getting a good angle on the baby. We were told that we may have to come back in a couple of weeks, as she would probably have to try again with some measurements of the baby’s back and legs.

And then the next day, I got a phone call.

brain…cysts…possibility…Down…two weeks…

My mind swirled around as the words echoed, louder and louder, louder and louder. There are cysts on the brain, sometimes these cysts are associated with Down Syndrome, sometimes the cysts go away on their own, come back in two weeks.

For the next two weeks, while we waited for the follow-up level 2 ultrasound, my emotions went from fear to sadness to horror at my own reaction to the news. Was something really wrong? Probably nothing was wrong, it was a mistake. Probably something was wrong, now what? We were 23 years old, what did we know about raising a child with special needs?

As the days went on, seconds stretching like days as we waited, I wrestled with the expectations I didn’t even know I had for my unborn child. Would my child be able to do the things I had done as a kid? Would my child enjoy things I enjoyed?

What kind of mother would even care about these questions, I wondered.

I sat for hours with my hand resting on my belly, praying. I wasn’t even sure what to say. Slowly, I realized that loving my baby was bigger than the expectations. I was still scared, but I loved that baby.

Finally, the two weeks were up and we headed back to the hospital. Seeing the perinatologist was a bit jarring at first, but the picture on the scan was so much clearer. We were in awe of our baby.

The doctor looked through the baby’s brain carefully, and finally pronounced that the cysts were completely gone. There was no reason to think that our baby had Down Syndrome. In fact, he told us that there was less than 1/2 of 1% chance that, even with the cysts, the baby would have had Down Syndrome.

We were so thankful that our baby was OK. But in my subsequent pregnancies I realized that telling people, “Oh, I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, as long as it’s healthy,” is totally inaccurate. Healthy or not, boy or girl, I would love my child. Not because of anything he or she has done, but just because I have been given this child to love.

And after all that, we got to find out that our first baby was a girl. Audrey.

 

Being pregnant while in graduate school is no piece of cake and even more stressful to learn your unborn child had Down syndrome. In her memoir Expecting Adam, Martha Beck battled almost everyone over her decision to continue her pregnancy. Join From Left to Write on November 10 as we discuss Expecting Adam. We’ll also be chatting live with Martha Beck at 1PM Eastern on November 10 on From Left to Write. I received a free copy of the book to facilitate my participation in this discussion.