My Bad Week

It's a Boy! It's a Girl! Two of the most exciting moments in my life.

The worst moment of my life: "We think your little boy may have some anomalies."

I thought I might stop blogging. This was supposed to be a funny blog! I decided to put it off for awhile. My life was completely frozen. His problems are very personal, but they will be very public in about four months, so dealing with it and "coming out of the closet" should be a good thing.

Our little boy has two problems, which right now, according to our doctors' current thinking, are probably associated. 1) There might be a heart problem, which could be nothing or pretty severe. Confused as I am? Basically, we have to wait a month to return to the pediatric cardiologist to see what he thinks. His gut feeling is that it probably isn't worst case scenario, but he will be able to tell in October. 2) Arm abnormalities. The only thing we know for sure is that he is not moving is left arm and that the forearm is missing a bone- or the two bones are fused.

I have found a support site for parents of children like this. It sounds like we just won't know much until he is born. It could be a number of chromosomal abnormalities that have caused the arm problem, more if it ends up involving the heart. I cannot believe that we are the 1 out of 100,000 parents to have this happen to their child. It was a spontaneous altering of a chromosome; it just happens. I refused amniocentisis because 1 out of 200 cause miscarraige and it does not test for these lesser known disorders. If something happened, we would lose both babies. If I can hit the 1/100,000 lottery, why not 1/200? From what I've read, some people actually terminate their pregnancy because of something being wrong with their arm! Can you believe that?!

Luckily, we have good people working with us at National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda (John will be working at the Navy Yard until April). We will be able to see a pediatric orthopedic surgeon before he is even born. And we will know what is going on with the heart. We are doing so much better this week and hopefully I will have more funny stories.

Before I go, I must mention our little girl or she will assault me again. I have to make sure to give her equal attention. I was laying on the couch last week all sad and all of a sudden I was being repeatedly kicked and my belly was jiggling. With a three inch leg! I really think she was telling me to knock it off. She is constantly moving around. That's how I knew I was having a girl, because in my family, the girls are the trouble makers.