In the Beginning...(part I)

There was me and Jimmy, madly in love :-) In Dec 2008 we started talking about having kids and ended up doing the non-commital, "we're not trying but we're not not trying." We found out we were pregnant in Aug of 2009 and we were obviously super excited. We did all the normal parent to be stuff- got the room ready, bought outfits and toys and gear, discussed and changed our minds about baby names, had anxiety over our big ultrasound and then relief when everything looked great. We got more nervous as our due date approached, Apr 20 2010, but even more excited!

Our little diva (though at the time we didnt know if she was going to be a boy or a girl) showed us that she was just that. Our due date came and went. I got bigger and more swollen and more cranky... then a week and a half after our due date on Apr 29 we finally went into L&D for our induction.

I remember being really nervous going in and saying out loud on the drive in, "what if everything is not ok?" and then immediately dismissing that as pre-labor jitters and normal nervousness. We got checked in, I changed and the resident and medical student came in with the lil bedside ultrasound to make sure the baby's head was down. It was and I remember the medical making the statement, "wow you can really see all the structures" They left the room and came back with the entire "night team" one of which was one of the Sr residents I recognized. She took a look at the ultrasound as well saying I previously had a low-lying placenta that they wanted to check out, I shoulda known something was up right then and there. She said she wanted to go get one of the perinatologists that was in-house to take a look, again shoulda known something was up.

The perinatologist came in and took a look at the ultrasound as well. Then he says, "well it looks like there is an issue, it seems as though your baby has developed some water on the brain." My immediate first thought, within a split second, was it might not be that bad, A lot of kids like that are just fine. I asked him how bad and sat up to look at the picture myself. It was bad.
I immediately put my hands over my mouth and kept repeating "oh my God, oh my God." The peri looked at me with wide eyes and asked me what I did. I told him I was one of the peds residents. I looked over at Jim, who had a scared look on his face but because no one had said exactly what was going on out loud, he didn't really know what was going on... I still feel absolutely terrible for that.

All of that transpired in a matter of seconds, it was so fast and our world was turned upside down. We talked for a bit and decided not to induce that night because we wanted the full day team in the NICU to be around when the baby was born. So we decided that we would go get some sleep (yeah right!) on the ante-partum unit, have a more detailed ultrasound in the morning and plan for a c-section after that, as the baby's head was on the upper limit of size that they would let me trial labor. So off we went to our room to rest up for the day ahead.