The Beginning

Brent @ 20 Weeks

Friday, May 16th, 2014 was the day my wife and I learned that the future for our family might look very different than how we envisioned it up to that point.  We had just completed what seemed like a routine ultrasound at her 20 week check-up, and although the wait for the doctor seemed longer than normal afterwards, we had Bryce to keep us company and no reason to suspect anything could be wrong.  We had opted for all the screening tests discussed with us to that point, including DNA, and everything had come back perfect.  We had been through this before with our 3 older children, and even though our oldest gave us a bit of a scare with being born at 32 weeks, there wasn't really anything abnormal with any of the prior pregnancies to give us any reason to think this would be any different.  We were in for a surprise.

The doctor came into the office and started telling us that she was going to need to refer us to a perinatologist for a more detailed ultrasound because they weren't able to see everything with the heart that they wanted to see.  She tried to reassure us not to worry and that it could be any number of things and it might not be anything to worry about.  Unfortunately, I am pretty good at reading people, and I can tell she was pretty concerned.  As we left the office that day, we began to experience a mixture of a lot of different feelings - disbelief, uncertainty, shock - as we reflected on the visit and the fact that the doctor seemed genuinely concerned.  But, overall we still were not sure if this was something that was an issue with the equipment or positioning of the baby, so we tried to remain optimistic until our perinatologist appointment.

Perinatologist...  Am I even spelling that right?  I didn't even know what these doctors were called prior to all this, but I thank God for them.  And for all of the other doctors and specialists in our not too distant future.

David