Mixed emotions

After seeing our little girl on the screen and getting about 20 picture of her to take home we waited for the doctor to read the sonogram. Dr. Cobb sends her patients to the Maternal and Fetal Medicine office to have an anatomy scan done. It is a very detailed sonogram...they literally measure every organ and body part to make sure the baby is growing correctly and there is nothing to be concerned about. The ultrasound tech had come back and taken an additional picture of the baby's head before we talked to the doctor, which made me worry that they had found something. I was right...

The doctor said they thought they saw a small cyst in her head... it's called a choroid plexus cyst. She said that the cyst can be a soft indicator of trisomy 18, a fatal chromosome disorder. Unfortunately, I had heard of the disorder before because I have known someone who had a baby with it. I was very scared after hearing the news. The doctor said the cysts are common and usually go away on their own. As long as the cyst doesn't indicate something more serious (trisomy 18) then it will go away and not affect the baby at all. She said there was a 1 in 483 (I think that's the number...I had a hard time concentrating on what she was saying) chance that something was wrong.

We had three options...wait and see if the cyst goes away, take a genetic blood test, or have an amniocentesis test done. The doctor really didn't seem concerned...she said that based on my age and the fact that there were no other signs she was almost certain this cyst would go away and everything would be fine. I elected to have the blood test done just to be sure. The nurse had trouble getting my blood and had to stick me twice (which is to be expected considering it took me 3 tries that morning to find the office...it just wasn't my morning). They said it would take 10-14 days to get the results back but they weren't sure how the holidays would affect the time frame. I knew those few days would seem like eternity as we waited for the results.

Kip was reassured by how relaxed the doctor was about the whole thing and kept telling me not to worry. I tried not to think about it, but I am a worrier so that's hard for me to do. We told a few people and I tried not to get upset but I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride. I went from being so happy about finding out the gender of our baby to being so worried about her and concerned that she might have a serious disorder. I researched a lot and found that a lot of babies have these cysts and it rarely indicates trisomy 18.

After 8 days of hoping and praying that everything would be ok I received a phone call at work today (January 2). The lady on the other end of the phone said she was from the Maternal and Fetal Medicine office and had the results of my test. Thankfully, the results were great and everything is just fine. Shew....what a relief!!!! Now, I can go back to being extremely excited about the next few months and meeting our little girl!