At 6am, day after Christmas, I was sleeping actually. Hub and I spent a lazy morning playing the Sims on the iPad and looking up stupid YouTube videos. He had to go to work at 2pm and work until 11 so we left the house a mess from all the Christmas stuff the day before and just hung around- you know what I mean all day in jammies, eating Christmas candy.
Eventually it was time for him to shower so I joined him. While in there my phone rang. I didn't know that at the time, it was down stairs. When I came down from showering I saw the missed call, it was a blocked number. I listened to the message that was left and it was my OB, asking that I call her back.
Deep down, I knew something was wrong. I had always known something was wrong. I waited until hub left for work and called the office back. I was upstairs in my bedroom, looking out over the street as hub drove away. The receptionist answered and I was transferred to the OB right away. I could feel the panic rising.
We exchanged pleasantries and then she reminded me that we had opted to do the combined 1st and 2nd trimester blood screens along with the NT scan to determine chromosomal abnormality risk. She said it was just a screening but that my odds had come back high.
By this point I had sat down on hub's side of the bed and had pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen. She said that the odds for DS were 1 in 200ish (she gave the real number). I remember thinking "That's ok, it's not so bad, we could do DS" We had previously discussed termination for anything fatal or really serious (we didn't define what that included). I was shaking, but thought it would be ok.
Then she said we were 1:5 for T18.
I don't know if she gave the T13 stat. She urged me not to look up T18, said that it was bad, but that we would do a scan and an amnio if I wanted one in the morning. Then we could discuss options if it was positive.
I rushed her off the phone, she said she would call back with an appointment time (she doesn't do amnios, so she needed to talk to one of the other OBs from downstairs). I sat on the bed and cried. Then my phone rang.
It was hub, he had forgotten his new Dunkin Donuts gift card, a present from my parents for Christmas. Could I run it out to him? He'd be home in a few minutes. Sure I said. He knew something was wrong. He must have asked me three times. You ok? Everything fine? I have no idea what he thought happened in the 5 minutes since he had left. In that 5 minutes everything changed.
I met him at the door with the gift card in hand. I had really intended to keep the news in until he was finished with work. One look at him and I broke down.
Somehow I got out the words to tell him everything that happened. He called into work. I googled. Cried some more. This is the first hit when you google Trisomy 18. Read it. Imagine being in that position (if you haven't been, most of my readers actually aren't termination for medical reason moms). I'm a researcher. Reading that T18 occurs in 1:2500 pregnancies but results only in 1:6000 live births set me on edge right away. Just under 1/3 make it to live birth? Bad bad. Then the list of defects, heart, esophagus, severe developmental delays.
I called my parents and they came over; devastated
Eventually the OB called back and scheduled our appointment and potential amnio for the following day.
(The 6am day after Christmas line is from Ben Folds Five Brick. Which you should know, because it is a great song)
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