Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Lily's Story

I didn't realize I hadn't told Lily's whole story. I've told so many people that it's hard to remember who's heard it and who hasn't.
So it all started with the Quad Screen that my doctor had ordered that came back freakishly abnormal. The numbers were so abnormal that he wasn't sure what it was but sent us to Minne.apolis to the perinatologist for a Level 2 u/s and possibly an amino. We were able to get in right away so off to the cities we went. The level II u/s showed that Lily had a lot of fluid on her but no heart problems. The perinatologist figured it was probably Turner's Syndrome (which was confirmed with the amino). Turner's Syndrome is a freak mistake that happens at conception that results in the baby only getting 1 sex chromosome. So I have 46 xx but Lily had 45 x. Turner's Syndrome only has a 2% chance of survival to birth. Because of all the fluid on her, her chances weren't great but she didn't have the typical heart issues. All sorts of options were issued to us including termination which was ABSOLUTELY NOT what was going to happen. What if she was in the 2%? She was alive and moving like a little worm inside me, how could we do that? Ugh, just makes me sick that people would do that (my personal opinion). So if we could get Lily to 24 weeks then the perinatologist would go in and remove the fluid (which was not without risk but worth it to her survival, in our opinion). No one thought she'd make it to the 24 week mark. Actually they didn't think she'd make it much past our appt (which was at 17 wk). Luckily for us, she made it to 21 weeks. The amino was done (not painful at all!!) and the results came back 1.5 wks later confirming Turner's Syndrome.
The silver lining to this whole deal is that Turner's Syndrome has never happened to the same couple twice! EVER!! That is providing a little reassurance during this pregnancy. I made my first appt yesterday which will include a u/s on Thursday to check that everything is going well. It's not even with the ancient u/s machine that my ob uses, it's with the 20 wk "big u/s" machine. I'm excited but extremely nervous that everything looks good. I'll post an update after the appt.

Thanks to everyone for the congrats! L and I are thrilled but nervous. I'm glad my ob is so conservative and anal that we're going to be getting a lot of looks at the little pumpkin. Just hoping that everything is normal and this pregnancy is VERY boring!

2 comments:

Birdee said...

Thank you for sharing her story, she is a little angel.
I'm so glad you have answers too and that the chances of it happening again are next to nothing, hopefully that will make it easier to just fully enjoy every moment of this "Hopefully Boring" pregnancy ;)

Jen said...

Thank you for sharing Lily's story. I always wondered what happened and figured it was related to the quad screen results, but didn't want to ask. Thank goodness you have the reassurance that the condition has never happened to the same couple twice. I'm praying that everything goes as smoothly as possible this time around.