20 Week Ultrasound

I am now getting into my twenty-fourth week, but had my regular ultrasound at twenty weeks. We were excited to go and hoping to find out what the baby is. We found out it is a girl! That is the part we're really excited about. But while the tech was checking measurements and getting certain shots, I noticed a look on her face that worried me. I left there feeling nervous and scared that we'd find out something was wrong. Sure enough, a week later I got the call from my GYN that they had indeed found something.

My GYN is very laid back, he never gets worried or nervous, he tries to always handle things rationally. But when he called me he told me right away that there was an issue and before telling me what they found, he sighed and said "Stay calm......" That made me want to freak out. He said that the tech noticed two cysts on the babies brain and that it could be nothing but they needed to air on the side of caution in case there was a possibility of chromosomal abnormalities. He told me to make an appointment with the antenatal testing unit (ATU) at the hospital as soon as possible so they could do another ultrasound and measure the cysts. Three days later my husband and I headed off to our appointment, nervous as hell and sick to our stomachs.

We read the good and the bad on the Internet about these cysts. The good thing was that there were a lot of women who had been given the same news and had very healthy normal babies. The bad thing was that the two chromosome abnormalities connected with these cysts were Down Syndrome and Edward's Syndrome. Everyone knows what Down Syndrome is but I had never heard of Edward's before. When I googled it I felt like I couldn't breath. Basically everything that could go wrong with a baby does when they have Edward's. The majority of babies don't make it to delivery but if they do, they usually don't live past the first couple of months outside the womb. Wow, that was hard to take. But I tried to stay positive and sane.

The tech we had at the ATU was great, very positive and upbeat. That made me feel much more at ease. What felt even better was that she told me she had seen this before and that every time, it had turned out to be nothing. She also told me that before the high-tech ultrasound machines came along, there were plenty of babies with cysts but no one knew which meant that no one had to go through the tests and waiting game. The ultrasound took over an hour. The tech measured every part of the baby's body, her head, arms, legs, even her ankles! I've never seen ankles that detailed on an ultrasound before. But they measure every possible thing because most often there will be signs or "markers" that indicate Edward's Syndrome. I made sure the tech checked to make sure the baby was a girl (I won't believe it until she's actually here and in my arms). And then we sat in a room, waiting for the doctor to read and look over everything and then come talk to us.

The doctor was very optimistic. She drew us a diagram of the fetal brain and circled the areas where these cysts most often appear. Then she showed us where the cysts are on either side of our baby's brain. She told us that she's not positive these spots are actually cysts. There is a chance that they are areas of the brain that are still developing. But she can't be sure of that either. She broke it down for us what the odds are that the baby will have Edward's Syndrome which, she said, is the abnormality they most commonly see associated with the cysts. Because they haven't found any other markers for Edward's, the chances are one in six-hundred and fifty that the baby will have it. The chances are much greater that the baby will have Down Syndrome but she didn't give us the odds I think for the shear fact that we'd be worried or convinced that our baby would have it. We had originally scheduled an appointment (as recommended) with a genetic counselor but were told we could cancel it by the ATU doctor. She had given us all of the information we would have gotten from the counselor plus we declined an amniocentesis so there was no reason to go to someone else. Even thought the amnio would give us a definite yes or no answer to whether the baby has an abnormality, it is too much of a risk to take. An amniocentesis can cause miscarriage. My husband and I had already decided before this appointment that whatever the outcome is, we can't change it nor would we want to end the pregnancy so therefore, there is absolutely no reason to have a risky test done. In the end, the doctor made an appointment to remeasure everything the first week of June and told us to put the odds we were given in the back of our minds until the baby is here and we can see for ourself if there are any problems. Of course that is much easier said than done.

So for the time being, we are preparing for our little girl while keeping our fingers crossed that our next ultrasound goes very well. I still believe that everything happens for a reason, even if we never understand why. With that in mind, I wake up every morning and imagine having my little baby girl here with me.