News no parent wants to hear..

The morning of March 14th arrives. I had spent the evening before at Mary Poppins in Madison, WI. I looked at all the people sitting in the Overture with their children and thought to myself, "Look at all these people. Hundreds of people in one location all perfectly fine. Why do I worry so much that my baby will be the one that isn't?"

When I got home the next morning James hands me my baby shower invite that came in the mail. I checked my registry and saw that a few purchases had been made. Not to mention I had an aunt already buy me the car seat that was sitting in my computer room. I recently purchased new maternity pants and leggings since I was just starting to show and clothes were getting uncomfortable.

So at 8am we arrived. The woman taking me back asked how we were doing. My response was "anxious". James' response was "excited". Once they got things started they found our baby's heart right away--that still looked great. They knew they were looking for a full bladder and kidneys yet. Then they kept looking....and looking...and looking. Another tech came in and looked, while the tech behind her had a sort of scowl on her face. Instead of staring at the monitor across the room, I started staring at the ceiling. They pushed their chair back and said, "we're going to ask the doctor come in to see if he can take a look..." At that instant, I started crying. I knew what that meant. They pulled the towel back over me and turned on the lights. Once doctor came in and they started again, they started taking pictures of what would be the "left kidney area" but the screen was blank. Same with the other kidney. Another doctor came in and sat down and turned to us and said, "I have a lot of experience with this and have been doing it for many years. I'm just going to take a look". They kind of talked among themselves while I just stared at the ceiling. Then I heard him say, "Oh. There's the adrenal glands...all the way down there." The two doctors walked out. Then one walked back and and said, "Jennifer, James--why don't you come back to my office so we can just talk". The lights came on and here started  what I knew was going to be a much different journey than I ever imagined.  Even with my cautiousness and all my guards up along the way, you never can prepare yourself for this.

The long short of that talk was that the baby developed beautifully, except it didn't have it's kidneys or bladder. Doctor said unlike adults without kidneys, developing babies need them as they help the amniotic fluid to increase when baby urinates, and increased amniotic fluid allows baby's to grow normally and develop strong lung function. He said if this pregnancy were to continue, baby would have no amniotic fluid (they barely measured any in my womb as is), but it would keep trying to grow, but stay in the area of amniotic fluid--which is going to cause baby to be under a lot of pressure and become very malformed. The diagnosis was bilateral renal agenesis. The mention of the adrenal glands? Well adrenal glands rest right on top of our kidneys. Since they were "all the way down there" that confirmed their suspicions without a doubt that this diagnosis was true. Babies with this diagnosis that even make it to term are either stillborn or live a max of 4 hours. Most will die way before 40 weeks. This condition was "incompatible with life" as they say.  I asked the doctor would they even know if the baby was in pain in the womb. He said, there's no way anyone can know.

We didn't really have options. What became the ultimate decision was that we would need to terminate the pregnancy. This was the 14th of March--the 15th I was going to be 21 weeks. The doctor said he strongly felt this was the right decision. I couldn't live knowing my baby was going to suffer inside of my little house that my body built for it. I just couldn't. The doctor was able to get us into labor and delivery on March 15th at 7:30.am.

Before we left, he wanted us to talk to a genetics counselor. While waiting for that doctor to come in, I called my mom's boyfriend at work. The secretary answered and knew who I was. Before she got excited and mentioned pregnancy, I told her it was a family emergency and she quite literally ran to get him. She came back to the phone out of breath, and said he'll be right there. He shortly there after picked up the phone and I asked if he was alone. He said he was. I said, "I need you to go get mom. I need you to be with her. I haven't told her yet, but our baby isn't okay. I have to deliver tomorrow. Our baby has no kidneys, no bladder, and no renal arteries--this is a fatal abnormality." I felt awful asking him to do this. I felt like I owed everyone an apology for giving them such hope for this baby, and not being able to keep it safe the way I thought I should be able to. I felt guilt.

The genetics counselor came in and said they wanted to get some family history, wanted to take a small skin sample of baby when it was born. They also wanted an autopsy. Their aim is to answer that one question that my husband and I had been asking ourselves since we stepped out of the ultrasound room: Why?