Will you pray for her?

I have been procrastinating this blog post for a while now. It seems I don't know where to start? I've tried to sit down and type this for a few weeks now... but my heart and my head have never seemed up for the task.
However, I'm feeling the need to put it out there now - to record my feelings so I'm not holding them inside anymore. This leaves me with only one option then - I guess I'll just start typing and see where my thoughts take me.

Let me start at the beginning: I am pregnant again. This will be our third child and I was thrilled to find out I was expecting. I always dreamed of a large family - my mom is one of four children and even though I know her childhood wasn't perfect by any means, somewhere along the way I developed this fantasy that having three brothers and sisters to share your life with would be perfect! I imagined my kids heading up the neighborhood game of flashlight tag, inviting their friends to spend the day at the lake with us, and playing board games together over holiday breaks from college. I can picture the laughter, the competitive spirit, the non-stop conversation and activity that having a large family brings - and it makes me smile. I thought that no matter what they disagreed on, they would always have someone else in their corner and that there would at least be one person they could turn to when the others were ticking them off.

That was my fantasy.
However, I married a man who was happy with only two kids - assuming God blessed us with one of each. Our first child was a girl and our second was a boy, and in Curtis' mind our lives were complete. I didn't feel complete. I felt this calling to be a mother to another child and was praying regularly for God's guidance on the topic. Of course, I wanted Curtis to be happy with having another. I had already given up on my dream of having four and was only hoping that I could convince him to have one more child - should that be God's will for us as parents.

We prayed about it for a month and Curtis, realizing how important it was to me, agreed to place it in God's hands and see what happened. We asked God that if it was His will for us to be parents again that He would bless us with another child, but if it was not His will, that He would prevent it. Well... without going into specifics - we found out we were pregnant and both felt completely secure that this was indeed God's will for our lives. And we were really excited!! We still are...

I am 35 and honestly didn't think much about that number or worry about what it meant. I mean women my age have healthy babies all of the time and I have been blessed with two already. I felt like it was just a number. That is until my 20 week ultrasound when I could tell the Doctor was concerned about something. I have to say that has to be one of the worst feelings in the world: when the Doctor is looking at the ultrasound, but not saying a word... and you sense that something isn't right but you are too afraid to ask. I have been blessed with two previous pregnancies that were both uneventful so I was expecting another clean bill of health.

When the Dr. finally turned to me to tell me what the results of my ultrasound, my heart felt like it was pounding inside my chest. He told me that what he was about to tell me would cause great anxiety inside of me, but could turn out to be nothing at all. He had my attention for sure now. He told me our baby girl has 4 cysts on her brain. They will not harm her in the womb, but they can be a sign of Trisomy 18 - a chromosomal disorder in which the baby has an extra 18th chromosome. You may have heard of Trisomy 21 - better known as Down's Syndrome. Down's Syndrome is actually the best of the Trisomy disorders... at least the baby can survive. With Trisomy 18, the baby will either be stillborn, or be born and only live 1-2 months (1 year at best). The prospects are bleak.

Now, keep in mind, my baby does not necessary have Trisomy 18 - the cysts are just a red flag that causes my doctors to take notice and puts me at high risk. I will go in for another ultrasound at week 28 (I'm 23 weeks now) and they'll look to see if any of the cysts have disappeared... my doctors are hopeful they will. The good news is that they have not found any major birth defects on the baby (as they can tell via ultrasound) yet, so it is possible she just has these cysts and that they are harmless. Of course, that is our prayer right now. Cysts are actually common in 3-4 % of all pregnancies and many turn out to be nothing, but the more cysts the baby has... the bigger a red flag. Four is NOT the number you want in this situation!

The scary part is that I won't truly know if she's healthy until she's born. The cysts going away in themselves (if they even do) doesn't ensure that she's healthy and the other signs they look for may or may not be obvious enough before she arrives for anyone to tell me 100% that she's fine. I could have an amniocentesis to know for sure but the risk of miscarriage concerns me and is too great for my comfort level so I'm not willing to take that chance. Therefore, I wait.

I ask that you all pray for my little girl. Pray that she is healthy. I do not have a name for her yet, as we just found out the sex a few weeks ago (at the same appointment that we found out about the cysts), and I've not been up to thinking about names. As I stated above, I truly believe she was a gift from God and that it was His will that placed her in our lives to begin with so I am trying so hard to trust in that and put all of the fears away. I know that fear comes from Satan and since there is absolutely nothing I can do to change things now... I need to stay positive and focus on my trust in God's will for my life. It just isn't always that easy to do.

I promise to keep you all informed as I continue along this journey over the next 4 months.