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Let Me Begin...

Some of you may be a bit confused by this blog. It began as my way to communicate with people in the States while I lived in Mexico, so if you are interested in my time there feel free to take a look. It is where I met and fell in love with my wonderful husband. As you can see, I have not written anything on it since my return, but because of recent events I have decided to begin again. So I will begin at the beginning....

When asking my supervisor for a bit of time to talk back in December, she asked "Are you pregnant?" I responded with "no, but now that you mention it..." When I returned home for school, Noah left to go to work, and I took a two tests, both which came out to be positive. It was a state of shock for me because I had just had ear surgery, and because of the timeline I realized that I had been pregnant during it which worried me. This was not all that worried me. The entire idea of being a mom scared me, and I did not feel ready for it. Between the sickness and tiredness, it was a while before I began to feel excited about having a baby. The guilt of feeling this way in the beginning followed me until recently.

Well, I got over the sick spells and my family and I began to prepare for the new addition. It was really fun and special because my sister, Jennifer, was pregnant at the same time. In early March I went for my check-up, and my doctor said that he would like me to see a high risk doctor because the baby was looking small for her age, and I arrogantly went on with life thinking nothing could be wrong with MY baby. He is only sending me there as a precaution. Even as I sat in this high-risk doctor's office a week later, I thought everything would be fine. My husband needed to get to work, so I encouraged him to go ahead because everything would be fine. Five minutes after he left, the doctor hit me with the news...our baby could have a chromosome problem (Down's or Edward's Syndrome) and a heart problem, and we could find out for sure by doing an amniocentesis which is 99% correct.

Knowing Noah could do nothing while he was at work, I hesitated to tell him too soon. He would feel worse for not being able to come home, and I didn't want this for him. It wasn't until I decided that I might return to the doctor's office for the amniocentesis in the afternoon that I called him and gave him a basic overview. My mom and sister, Lori, sat in the room with me while Jennifer was in the waiting room.

While waiting on the results during the next week, Noah and I prepared ourselves for the baby to have Down's Syndrome, and although we felt inadequate for the task, we knew that God would provide all that was needed. I was not prepared for the news that was to come.

A few days after spending time registering, buying bedding, etc. I got the call from the doctor saying that our baby has Trisomy 18, Edward's Syndrome. The grief was so overwhelming I didn't know what to do. Shortly after, my doctor met with us to answer all the questions that we have. We researched everything to know what this really meant for us. Generally we have learned that every case, every baby has its own unique set of problems. There is no way to prevent or cure them, and so very few of these babies make it to their first birthday.

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