Luis Ignacio was my second pregnancy…from the moment I found out I was pregnant I had a feeling it was a boy not only because my gut was telling me so but also because I kept dreaming about him and to be honest I never thought about the name Ignacio until he told me his name in my dreams. At the same time, my gut kept telling e that there was something happening…that something wasn’t quite right and I had dreams about it as well. On every check up I asked how was everything and every time I heard the words: “everything is ok”. Week 20 comes along, I went in for the Ultrasound to find out the gender, I went by myself cause my husband wasn’t allowed in because of covid and I asked the ultrasound lady to not tell me the gender but to put it in an envelope so I could go home and find out together with my husband, we we’re gonna do a gender reveal and celebrate my birthday on the same day… But then she sent me to a different room to wait for a doctor…I asked if everything was ok and she told me there were some things that weren’t adding up. The doctor comes in and she tells me that I need to see a specialist right away because there was fluid in the baby’s neck and his hands were clenched which was a sign for trisomy. She didn’t say which one all I heard was trisomy. First thing I do is google what this is about and my world fell apart. Two days later we meet the specialist and she said that just by looking at the ultrasound she was 90% sure it was trisomy 18, we did amniosinthesis to confirm the diagnosis and it came back positive.
Luis Ignacio also had little tumors in his brain, something in his lungs and heart problems that “if he didn’t have trisomy 18, any doctor would fix it but since he has trisomy 18 no one is gonna wanna do it cause it’s too risky”. Thank goodness my husband was allowed in with me cause my world fell apart…and his did too. I’ve never seen him cry in front of anybody before and that day we both cried with the doctor. We were told that his chances of surviving were pretty slim because of all the problems he had.
The world felt much “brighter” before hearing those news. I feel like when I heard the news about the baby having trisomy 18 everything seemed dull, like a light switch was turned down. I know it might be hard to understand but that’s the best way I can describe how I was feeling that day.
We were given the option to continue the pregnancy or to go into labor.
Whatever we chose, it was gonna be hard. No matter what. Either way we were going to see our child die. It wasn’t fair, we were two 30-year-olds losing a child.
We decided to go into labor and on April 1st at 2:15 in the morning, we got to see his face for the first time. We got to hold him, kiss him, see him and tell him a million times we love him and how sorry we were. His sister was very excited to meet him, she was 2 years old then so she didn’t really understand what was going on. We got to hold a little funeral for Luis Ignacio and we go visit him.
I can’t tell you how much he changed my life and how some dates still live in my memory like the day we were diagnosed, the day he passed away, the day he was supposed to be born…those dates are very hard…may be it will be easier with time.
Luis Ignacio, you will forever live in my heart ❤️