Our first specialist appointment

On the Tuesday following our big news (6/9/15) we were scheduled to have another ultrasound done with higher technology equipment and to meet with a fetal abnormality specialist (and she is a high risk OB). Boy did that weekend ever seem long! As I went through each day with ups and downs in emotion and processing my grief (very normal for this situation) God continued to care for us and remind me of the truth when I was forgetting.

My mom offered to drive us there since we might be distracted and her car had A/C (it was a hot day) which we decided to take her up on. We left our house at about 6:45am and arrived in plenty of time for our 8:00am appointment.

We were first taken in to the ultrasound room and we had a very nice tech who answered our questions as much as she could (liability and all that) and explained what we were seeing as we went. We had decided that though we hadn't wanted to know the gender previously it would help us through this time if we could know and name the baby so we could start to bond better. This tech couldn't tell though because our little one really likes to have it's legs crossed!

After the ultrasound we were put in a little room where we got to talk to a nurse who recommended getting insurance (we are with Samaritan ministries so we said we were self pay) and asked if we had any questions she could answer and gave us ideas of things to ask the doctor.

Dr Jolly arrived super early and was able to take care of us right away (instead of waiting until the 10:30 appointment she arrived at 9:30). She had us go back to the ultrasound room so that she could take a look herself and get a really good idea (even better than just pictures) of what she was seeing. She explained the name of each marker we saw and told us what she was looking at or for.

Once she had seen what she needed to see we went back to the room so that we could talk about it. She explained in detail what each of the things were that we saw. The biggest new information we got was that the heart appears to have an A/V canal (as well as an ASD and a VSD which go with that often) as well as the possibility of the greater vessels which go from the heart (to the lungs or into the body) being connected to the wrong sides of the heart. She also said that she was unable to tell the gender due to things being either underdeveloped or something being a little big. She said that we could do a blood test on me that would most likely be able to tell us if the baby had Trisomy 18 or 13 and would be able to tell the gender or we could do an amniocentesis. She told us that the blood test wasn't always accurate but that if it did test positive for T-18 we could be pretty sure that that was what it was and that an amniocentesis would be 100% accurate.

We didn't want to do the amniocentesis due to the risks involved so we chose to go with the blood test. We were told that the tests could come in either on the 16th or 17th. Talk about a long wait!

At that time she also began to answer our questions about future possibilities and what a T-18 diagnosis could mean for us (risk of still birth, infant death during birth and after birth, hospital birth, etc.). We also asked about what the warning signs were for miscarriage or fetal demise. She told us to continue with our care with the midwife at this time so that we have someone local who can check in on our pregnancy and can be our person to call with questions and so on and that we would meet with them for the high risk care.

We were quite happy with our experience with her and really liked her a lot. We scheduled to meet another high risk OB on the 22nd along with a genetic counselor and we also were going to have the option of doing the amniocentesis if the blood test came back negative.

Our next appointment with the midwife was scheduled for the 17th.