Our Lady's Garden
Spend some time with her and she will wrap you in her mantle
Three Days is a Lifetime
Page 2
It is at this point in the conversation that most of you have formed questions, lets talk about those for a minute.
The first big one: Did you know?
Was your pregnancy normal? Aren’t there tests that show this kind of thing? Didn’t you have an ultrasound? Really . . . You didn’t know?
In my world, babies are a gift from God, not an event that is chosen and controlled and No, we didn’t know. It was a different pregnancy and just how different I would not realize for probably about a year. By then, I had plenty of time to remember the days spent with Matthias and identify clues that my body had shared and my mind had carried that didn’t spark any alarms until the night of his delivery. It was to be a very different delivery than the other 7 children.
And yes, there are tests. At 15 weeks, we consented to and failed the triple screen test, which didn’t surprise us. I was almost 40 years old and the test utilizes maternal age is one of the leading indicators. We were told we could have a 3-D ultra sound, only recently available in our area.
Were we interested in more testing?
It was an easy question to answer, "No." We knew as we got older if we were blessed with more children, that was the chance of a child with a disability. Having a child with Down’s Syndrome, for instance, was something I had thought about. We also knew that we would never consider termination. We had an ultrasound early in my pregnancy and that didn’t indicate anything requiring surgery like Spina Bifida. We had seen our child. We were not surprised or alarmed by the results. Were we naïve, perhaps, but we were at peace.