The Ultrasound

Actual Date: November 16, 2010: So the day we had been waiting for was FINALLY here! We were going to get to see our baby and hopefully know if Bryce was going to have a Brother or a Sister. My appointment was at 3:30 and I was supposed to have the ultrasound first and then see the Doctor. 4:00 rolled around and I was just getting called back to see the Doctor - a new one who we'd never met. She was very nice and answered any questions we had (I had laryngitis & a terrible cough and wanted to know what I could take, if anything - Robitussin was the answer!). As she was saying good-bye & handing me my paperwork, I told her that we were supposed to have our ultrasound today. She checked into it and after convincing the u/s tech that my appointment with her had been overlooked, we were sent to the waiting room again.

She was the same tech who had done our ultrasounds with Bryce and we filled her in on him as she began scanning my belly. She had the monitor turned toward her until she got all of her measurements. Jason could see though, and was filling me in on what popped up on the screen - arms, legs, spine, feet, hands, etc. The tech had been making conversation with us but it eventually died off. I began to notice that she was looking at the screen more carefully and that this had been taking quite a long time... she had even pursed her lips at the monitor. I was about to ask if everything was okay when she said, "Okay, I'm going to stop there. I see somethings that concern me and I'm going to go get the doctor." "What's wrong?" we asked. She explained to us that the baby's "long bones" (femur, tibia) were measuring shorter than normal. We asked what this meant and she said that the baby may have a form of dwarfism and that's why she wanted to bring in the doctor. She then asked us if we still wanted to know the gender of our baby and we said "yes!" She scanned me for another few minutes, which I FINALLY got to see, and told us she was almost 100% sure it was a GIRL! ( I was so shocked because I thought for sure the baby was a boy, lol.) She went off to find the doctor. I turned to Jason with tears in my eyes and he just held me. This was all so shocking and sudden and after months of being told that "everything was great," where did this come from? Jason just hugged me and said, "God won't give us more than we can handle, right?" I knew he was right and that everything was going to be okay.

We met with the Doctor in her office where she explained the same things that the u/s tech told us. She said that based on the measurements, our baby girl looked small. The arms were smaller, the legs were smaller, the chest was smaller...she was beating around the bush or maybe just not sure what to say. Jason leaned forward and finally asked, "So what you're telling me is, the worse thing that it could be is that she's going to have dwarfism?" She said, "Yes, dwarfism was most likely." She was concerned that the baby's chest cavity looked smaller than normal. She was going to send us to a perinatal specialist who would know more and be able to do a more accurate level II ultrasound. She asked several times if there was anything like this in either one of our families... there isn't. (I think we would know if there was a "Little Person" running around in either of our families. - Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but it was almost insulting that she kept questioning us about that.) As we were leaving she reassured us that maybe the calculations were just off or that the specialist would say that everything was fine. We even joked that the baby might just be on the shorter side (like Jason).

As we left, we had to hurry to pick up Bryce from his school before they closed. We passed each other at some point on the road and we both had tears running down our cheeks. I don't remember driving home that day, but picking up Bryce and hugging him was the BEST feeling ever!

That night we started our Internet search on dwarfism (medically known as Achondroplasia) and realized that aside from some medical issues that could arise, our baby girl was going to be perfectly fine, just little. We had some "freak out" moments as some of the achondroplasia diagnosis were worse than others, but all-in-all, we knew that everything was going to be okay. Our search would now start for the best doctors, research, and information that we could find. This was uncharted territory for us and we wanted to make sure that we educated ourselves to be able to make the most informed decisions regarding her care. We were also holding out for the appointment with the perinatal specialist hoping they would reassure us that maybe everything was going to be okay.

The following morning, I received a phone call stating that I had an appointment the next day! (Sigh of relief!)