Week 24 – 25
As with any serious medical issue, you want to get a second opinion. Ours was scheduled for June 5, 2013 with another “specialist.” The day before that appointment we had our second family prayer time. It was just as good as the first, and actually branched out into other serious issues going on in all our lives. Thank God for that time with our families! God is Good!
Our second opinion ultrasound found the same abnormalities as our first, but this doctor was much better at delivering the results and was more respectful of our feelings and our decision not to abort our child. It was a good, honest conversation at the end of the nearly three-hour visit. As a curious side note, I asked him for a ballpark figure of how many couples/mothers that come through his office decide to “terminate” given ultrasound results like ours. He cautiously thought about it for a minute and finally said it was probably around 90%. My heart sank into my stomach. 90% of the babies faced with *possible* challenges before birth (per the sonograms) were not given the chance to fight for their own lives!?! Is this really what technology has done for us?
I say “possible challenges” because with every new office we go to for an ultrasound comes paperwork we have to sign that states how an ultrasound is “not an exact science” and that it can’t be fully relied upon, etc. Plus, when you add in the countless stories we’ve heard from family, friends, co-workers, and perfect strangers where a sonogram showed various abnormalities the entire pregnancy but the baby came out “just fine,” you realize just how in-exact that science really is. But the doctors delivering their analysis of those sonograms must never have read the paperwork we had to sign from their own office in their own waiting room an hour before. If they had, who knows how many of those 90% would be walking around today making a contribution to society one way or another.
Ok. I’m down from my soapbox.
About a week after that appointment our midwife called Jacky to tell her that the specialist had recommended we be transferred to Jackson Memorial down in Miami; it is the only facility in the area capable of handling what he was seeing in the sonograms. Basically, if we were to deliver in any other hospital in south Florida, Baby J would most likely have to be airlifted to Jackson Memorial for the kind of surgery only they are equipped to handle. He was simply taking out the middle-man. Thank you, Dr. Specialist! Score 1 for Team Baby J!
This was an answer to prayer for us and our family. We all felt peace about this move. As much as it was an inconvenience to drive to Miami for all the doctor visits, it was a sigh of relief knowing we and, most importantly, Baby J were in the best possible hands available to us. We narrowed the list of high-risk doctors delivering at Jackson Memorial down to one doctor in particular who not only researches and teaches high-risk obstetrics but has been doing so for quite a few years. And his office is the farthest north (meaning we “only” had to drive to Miami and not Kendall for each visit).
Throughout all our appointments and subsequent disappointments, Baby J’s heartbeat has been steady and strong and he/she has been increasingly active inside Jacky’s growing belly. We have been so thankful to hear the heartbeat every doctor visit – thinking about it, it’s almost like Baby J is talking to us through that and letting us know he/she is hanging in there. The routine visit is to hear the heartbeat first and then go do the ultrasound second. “Here’s the good news… now for the bad news.”
