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.