The Life Of 5

The Life Of 5

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

I can sleep. I can breathe. I can eat.


 

Since March, we have had so many doctor appointments already with Rauri. Of those appts, 97.2% of those I have left with tear filled eyes, fighting to keep my head up. This was something I was never really faced with before; we had two extremely healthy, quick, surprising, wonderful pregnancies, so some days it has been especially difficult this time around. However, through fears, tears, trials, and triumphs we have made it to the glorious HALF WAY POINT of our pregnancy. Which as many of my fellow Facebookers saw, I celebrated with some online shopping. ;) Anyways, many of you know today was a really big day for Charlie, myself, and really all of the kiddos, but Rauri in particular. And now that our morning has come to a close, I am incredibly excited to be writing for you all. Thankfully this time, my heart, mind and nerves are much more at ease than they were when I wrote the first installment.

 

I had to really giggle this morning throughout our ultrasound (which mind you, was so long I was even granted a pee break mid way through, for real!) Rauri, much like her older brother spent most of the ultrasound with (as most of us with Nash called it) “her dukes up!” She wasn’t much for flash photography. There’s no way she gets that from her big sister! ;) It was priceless. We have been told countless times, “don’t worry she will probably be sleepy and lazy in utero”, “you probably will rarely feel her because they aren’t strong enough for you to get nudged hard enough”, “don’t worry when you don’t see her move on the ultrasound that’s common in kids with down syndrome”.  I giggle. Why? Because none of those have proven to be true with Rauri. Not a single one. Typical to the stubborn, stubborn people she shares her bloodlines with; she already needs to prove others wrong. Big time. Once again, priceless.

 

As the tech stepped away after the first portion of the ultrasound to make room for the Maternal Fetal Medicine Dr to conduct some of her own ultrasound exam she joked with us after we shared a story of Bubba, not exactly loving to wear clothes now adays, and about how he put his parts right out there for us to see when we found out that he was a little boy in the cities during an ultrasound that this little girl definitely shared the love her brother has for being an exhibitionist as her lady parts were well on display. She already isn’t very modest. Great. She definitely gets that one from her mama. We will save those stories for another day though.

 

This Dr. was incredible, and had a lot better bedside manner than we had previously been warned of. She went on with her exam and began to rattle off one hell of a run on sentence (definitely guilty of that myself). This sentence started with, “The reason we really conduct these lengthy ultrasounds is to pay close attention to the heart and its function - as you know it is extremely common in kiddos with Down syndrome to have heart defects and over half of them are affected BUT IM NOT SEEING A SINGLE ONE OF THOSE WITH HER HEART.”

 

WAIT! WHAT? It took a few minutes for my mind to catch up with what she had just said. And then the tears came. Again, another doctor appointment where I didn’t leave without tears, but this time they were tears of relief, of gratitude, of understanding, of ease, of happiness.   

 

Though they still plan to continue with the ECHO in another months time just to be sure there wont be changes in her status, I left the office today without worry, without thinking of delivering in a very strange hospital with staff I didn’t know, I didn’t worry that my daughter would be taken from my body and immediately rushed into heart surgery, I didn’t think of what it could be like to go days without even getting to hold my daughter for the first time. For the first time I could picture my beautiful girl, snuggled in a blanket, with a little pink cap WITHOUT the tubes, and cords, and staples and bandages.

 

I could sleep. I could breathe. I could eat.

 

I know that this doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods entirely, as that doesn’t ever really happen. But we were also informed that there was no evidence of her intestines, her bowel, or her stomach being affected. Also extremely common birth defects in these peanuts. She went on to say that though there are obvious indications that Rauri does in fact have Down syndrome her ultrasound looks incredibly typical in most aspects. True textbook to peanuts that have Down syndrome Rauri’s femurs rang in at a whopping 12th percentile. Dropping her U/S gestational age from an average 20w 2d to 19w 6d, I will take it! My belly on the other hand is measuring at 22 weeks, with a gigantic weight gain of 4 lbs! ;) They explained that with the first trimester screen findings, all of the blood work and genetic testing, and this ultrasound compiled - we are sitting at a 99.(something)% definitive that Rauri has full blown, full range, Trisomy 21 and not mosaic, translocation, or otherwise. This is something we already have kind of figured and come to terms with, and now spend hour by hour and day by day becoming more and more excited for our perfect little girl.

 

I want to thank everyone for their ongoing prayers, support, phone calls, text messages, facebook messages, friendly smiles, ect. They continue to fuel our positivity and excitement. We cold not feel more prepared and more thankful for the resources and family/friends that we are surrounded by. After today I feel like we could never be defeated.

 

I am kind of bummed, that for such a long ultrasound we didn’t really get great photos but we got to really see her true personality and got to see her face a ton. Due to the placenta being really close to her face it didn’t translate well into 3D images. We will try again at the echo in a month but i will post what i have from today later.

 

All I know is that she is perfect. Beautiful. Healthy. Squirming. Growing. Strong. Mine. Ours. Perfect.