My journey through pregnancy wasn’t how I ever thought it would be.

It wasn’t the most magical time of my life. I didn’t have that “glow”. No rush of energy in my second trimester. I didn’t even have a 9 month pregnancy.

Here’s how it did go…

Justin insisted on me taking a pregnancy test at home one morning, half as a joke, half hoping that we would see those life-altering two lines. Usually you have to wait 2-5 minutes for results, but it turned positive within seconds. On this typical Friday morning before heading to work, he found out he would be a dad. Obviously he didn’t trust the test and made me go to the doctor to confirm it. (Spoiler alert: it was still positive.)

My first trimester was filled with your typical nausea and exhaustion… Ok let’s be real, my first two trimesters made me feel like a bloated slug with a hangover.

I don’t remember much from those few months, probably because I either blocked it from my memory or was sleeping the entire time. Who knows. But besides the constant state of bleh I was living in, I was so excited to be having this baby. So excited to be pregnant. I remember daydreaming about what being pregnant would be like: the perfectly round bump, the luscious hair, the glowingly perfect skin. I always thought it would be some of the best months of my life. (Here’s another spoiler: it wasn’t.)

Fast-forward to our 20 week ultrasound appointment.

We were the classic, giddy soon-to-be-parents who were so ready to find out what we were having, because that’s all this ultrasound meant to us: learning the gender of our baby. The u/s was going great as far as we could tell, our tech was the sweetest lady around and was pointing out all baby’s limbs and features. We opted for her to write the gender down and place it in an envelope so we could open it that night at dinner, which would be a celebration of our second anniversary too. Once we finished up the ultrasound, we met with my OBGYN. I thought it would be just another everything-looks-great-see-you-in-4-weeks type discussion, just like everyone expects at this appointment,

But when she flew into the tiny exam room and said, “I’m worried about your baby,” everything changed.

She went on to tell us that one of our baby’s kidneys was covered in cysts and was most likely not functioning properly, limbs were all different sizes, one chamber of the heart wasn’t growing correctly, and overall was very small for gestational age. We sat dumbfounded while she said she would refer us across the street to a high-risk doctor and genetic counselor. When she left the room, I remember looking down at Justin from the exam table and watching him break down. Somehow I held it together and could comfort him; my mind and my heart were so quickly scrambling to hold on to any hope that they could find to believe everything the doctor saw was a mistake, that our baby was perfect.

We both desperately needed some good news to get us through the next few hours.

Our appointment with the high-risk doctor at Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) wasn’t for a while, so we walked with puffy eyes to a cold, sad bistro table in the hospital to learn what we were having. When we opened that little envelope and saw the phrase, “It’s a girl!” next to a little hamburger (that’s what the pros apparently call it…), we both started weeping. I think it was a mixture of joy because we both secretly wanted a girl, as well as a deep and overwhelming sadness. Knowing she was a she somehow made it more real for us: we could see in our minds a perfect baby girl grasping our finger for the first time after birth, running rampant around the house with the tiniest of pigtails, yelling “Mama! Dada!” over and over until our ears rang. But would she be able to do any of those things? Would she even survive?

We hugged and wept and prayed for our precious child as we held her photographs in our hands.

I think we were hesitant to give her a name right away, but we felt a tug to want to call her by her name rather than “baby girl”.She deserved it. Up until this point, we couldn’t agree on a single girl’s name, but when one of us (Lord I can’t remember who for the life of me) tossed out “Olivia”, we were both sold. Olivia in Latin translates to – you guessed it – olive. Biblically, extending an olive branch refers to giving the gift of peace, which is what we prayed for over this entire situation.

We craved God’s peace, grace, and protection over our daughter.

We kept this to ourselves for as long as we could, but it felt comforting somehow to know our baby girl had a name.

After a wait of what felt like an eternity, we met with a genetic counselor and went over an extensive overview of both our family’s medical history.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary – no history of any congenital heart defects, kidney disease, or other genetic disorders in either of our families. This seemed like good news to us, so a small ray of hope peeked through the clouds of the day. Then we were asked the question I knew was coming: “Would you like to terminate the pregnancy?” I wanted to give a lengthy speech about how I see every fertilized egg as a child, a human with the right to live, regardless of health or if they’re wanted by their parents. But all I could muster was a simple, “No.” If my baby girl had the chance to live, I would do anything and everything in my power to give that to her.

Our GC also went over tests we could run to pursue a potential cause to these issues, which included an amniocentesis. I struggled so hard in the coming months with my decision not to go ahead with this testing. I have an irrational fear of large needles/injections, and having a giant one stuck into my stomach scared the absolute hell out of me. Another worry was that it can possibly increase the risk of miscarriage, and I was not about to introduce any more risk to my baby. (Eventually, we would run a blood test [NIPT] that is able to assess the likelihood of Trisomy 21 [Down syndrome], Trisomy 18 [Edwards syndrome], and Trisomy 13 [Patau syndrome].) We were honestly pressured a lot to have an amnio, and I felt so much guilt in saying no so many times, but I decided to trust my newfound mother’s intuition and stuck with my original answer throughout my pregnancy.

Once our tears were dried for the hundredth time that day, we went in for another ultrasound.

I remember the tech vividly, how bubbly and sweet she was even though we were having the worst day of our lives. She knew what was going on, she knew what to look for in our baby that was potentially threatening her little life, yet she still wanted this to be a happy time for us. She knew this was one of our first glimpses of our daughter and she wanted some part of it to be joyful. I never appreciated that or even thought about it fully until now, and I’m so thankful for people like her – people who step into these impossible situations to help and bring even the tiniest ray of life-giving light to those who are hurting so deeply.

This angel of an ultrasound tech took in-depth looks at every bit of our baby, and after an hour long ultrasound, our spirits were lifted with some good news (compared to what we thought was going on earlier). We were told that her limbs were all proportionate, her right kidney seemed to be functioning, and her heart looked to be growing properly. The bad news: she was measuring 2 weeks behind, her left kidney was not functioning at all, and her tiny heart wasn’t in the right spot. Justin and I were filled with mixed emotions as the genetic counselor told us this could be good news and she may not have any life-threatening disorders, but obviously there were still major issues present. We were then told that we would be coming back for frequent ultrasounds at MFM to check in, and we would also be referred to Seattle Children’s Hospital for more advanced  echocardiograms.

I wish I could remember what happened after we left the hospital, but I think all that information was too much for my brain to handle.

Nothing else could fit. I do know that we told our family and close friends what was going on right away because we didn’t want to be alone in this. We couldn’t handle it. In future posts, I’ll share more about how absolutely incredible our community was during our pregnancy and how impossible it would’ve been to get through this without them.

I’ll end here (because woah that’s a long post girl) and invite you to continue along with me in reliving our pregnancy here.

C