My husband and I struggled with infertility. We were so happy and felt so blessed when we had our daughter with the help of IVF. We thought we were done, IVF is expensive and since it took three tries, my insurance wouldn’t cover anything. Then I got new insurance through work which covered IVF. We decided to give it a try. We got pregnant on the first try! We felt so blessed to be able to give our daughter a brother or sister… Everything was going so well, I was apprehensive the entire time that something wasn’t right. My dr assured me everything looked great, still, I couldn’t buy anything, not start buying diapers, nothing.
My 20-week ultrasound was done at the hospital since I was 39 and my mother in law had two babies that died shortly after birth of heart defects. We did the same thing with my daughter so there were no red flags. I saw my babies heartbeat, saw him or her moving around and then I took a big sigh of relief. I really felt ok now. The ultrasound tech did her thing, got up to get the dr to come in, again, I was not worried, the same thing happened with my daughter. She did not tell us if it was a boy or girl, so before she got up, we asked. She showed us a picture and we could clearly see we were having a boy.
The dr came in and started talking about how we must be so worried and he would have answers soon. That took us by surprise. We learned our little boy had a heart defect and were sent to Children’s hospital. Here, over the course of the next 5 days, we found out that our Jacob Lee had hypoplastic left heart syndrome and trisomy 18. We were told this was incompatible with life and they could ‘end it today’.
We went ahead with my pregnancy with my own doctor we were beyond devastated. I felt that my dreams were in my grasp and someone ripped them away. Why? Why him? Why us? I wound up being induced at 26 weeks since my blood pressure was going up. During labor, my placenta separated from the uterine wall and I lost 2 liters of blood. Jacob did not survive that. He was so beautiful. He was tiny, yet perfect. He did not have any of the deformities other than his heart that is common with trisomy 18. His aunts uncles and grandparents all got to hold him and say goodbye. We had a Now I Lay me down to sleep take photos. I prayed his nighttime prayers to him, sang him his lullabies and wrapped him in a blanket. The hardest thing I ever had to do was walk out of that hospital without my baby. People who have not gone through something like this just cannot get it.
I pray for all families that had to endure this.