The Cheese Sandwich

It has taken me weeks to get the courage to write this post but I was inspired by an e-mail from my sister-in-law today. I will never forget the love my husband showed me by making me a cheese sandwich.

Our baby is now a healthy five-week old baby but the battle to get him here was hard. At the age of 34, I found out that I was unexpectedly pregnant. I had never had an easy pregnancy and was scared.

April 13 came, or 18 weeks, and I felt horrible. I would find out two weeks later that my gall bladder needed to come out. My husband and I went to the doctor to find out the gender of our baby. We were immediately told that we were having a boy and were excited. The ultrasound seemed to last forever and I remember thinking I just wanted to go back to bed. Pictures were taken of every part of the baby. We were soon handed a long line of about 25 ultrasound pictures and told the doctor would be in soon.

The next hour of my life is a blur. The high risk doctor came in the room and told us our baby had echogenic bowel, or bright bowel. We were immediately taken to the genetics counselor to learn what this meant. The genetic counselor explained that the baby had a 90% chance of nothing being wrong but had a 10% chance of down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, being stillborn, or a number of autoimmune diseases.

I had declined all blood test at the first of my pregnancy that would determine most of these diagnosis. My only option was an aminoscientis. The risks of a miscarriage after an aminoscientis are high. My uterus was already thin and I felt horrible so we declined the test. My husband and I both knew that we would keep and love the baby no matter how he was born. My husband guided me out of the office in tears that were so strong that I could not even see where I was walking.

I don't remember much after this point but I remember that my husband drove to his work, explained to his supervisor what was going on, and brought my home. He made me a cheese sandwich, which tasted amazing, and put me to bed. Since neither one of us could speak, we announced the gender of our baby on the family website and did not make any phone calls. It would be exactly one month later that we told our parents what was on the ultrasound.

I then became the "test patient" at my high-risk doctor's office. The office was trying to decide which piece of new ultrasound equipment to buy. Since they received all the echogenic bowel referrals, I was the perfect patient. I had an ultrasound at 22, 25, and 28 weeks. All of these ultrasounds came back the same "bright bowel". I begin to dread these words but knew that I loved the baby inside of me and would either provide the baby with receiving a body on earth or be a mother to whatever was given to me.

At 32 weeks, I had an ultrasound to measure the size of the baby because they did not know how much longer the body was going to allow the baby to stay inside of me. The same ultrasound tech had been with me the entire time. She looked at me and told me that if she didn't know my history that she would not diagnose the baby with bright bowel at all.

At 36 1/2 weeks our baby was born. At this point, only a handful of people knew anything about the diagnosis of "bright bowel". We all held our breath as the many tests came back negative. The stress of the situation was gone, and we had a health baby.

I write this not out of sympathy for myself but for sympathy of others desperately searching the internet looking for other people's experiences. Stay positive and know that odds are so low that your baby will most likely be born healthy and strong.