“Please return our call at the doctors office. We have your genetic testing results back”.
I began to shake the second I heard that message. This was my third “geriatric pregnancy” (that phrase cracks me up every time), and none of the doctors ever asked me to call them back. They would just leave a message saying all was fine.
I felt sick to my stomach and wanted to throw up. I knew it wasn’t good. I pulled into the parking lot to call my doctor back, and as I was sitting there, a woman with a little 3-4 year old child with Down syndrome got out of her car. One look at her, and I knew that was going to be my life now as well. I began sobbing for what seemed like hours….
When I called the doctor back, her casual tone about it all infuriated me. She was telling me the diagnosis as if she were telling me my prescription was ready to be picked up at the pharmacy.. kind of like that “all done, come and get it” non emotional message you get from them. Her tone of voice infuriated me.
When she was done telling me I tested 91% accurate for T-21, she just as quickly scheduled me for my follow up with them to go over family history.
That’s it! No, “I’m so sorry to tell you this but”… or “I know this must be so hard for you to hear”… nope, none of that. Just 1,2,3,4.
- It appears the baby has a club foot
- The baby has trisomy 21
- The baby has an enlarged hole on his heart.
- When can you come in for a follow up.
I hated that doctor for weeks, and I always made sure not to schedule any appointments with her. I guess a part of me blamed her for giving me my “life in prison with out parole” sentence.
Looking back on it after Grayson was born, however, I have complete respect for her now. She knew what I didn’t know. It wasn’t a death sentence, and my life wasn’t over. I was pregnant, and having a baby, and he needed monitoring. Period. That doctor knew a miracle was still inside my belly, with a heart beat, fingers and toes.
I told my current nanny at the time, with tears and snot streaming all down my face (envision little snot nose Roscoe from Martin). She didn’t say sorry either. She told me the opposite. She new a family who had a baby with Down Syndrome and they loved her so much, the kids were so in love her, and their life seemed normal.
I wasn’t buying it..
Now the call I was dreading to make was to my husband. I felt nothing but shame as I prepared to tell him. My husband is always overly optimistic, and I’m the pragmatic realist. He voiced his concern over me having another baby due to my age. I looked at him like “chile (child) please”! I had several friends who had babies in their 40’s who were completely healthy. “Everything will be fine”. To put his fears to rest, I went to get a physical and received my clean bill of health, so we decided I was okay to try for our last baby. The fact that I even got a physical to make sure I was okay to have a baby, just goes to show my complete ignorance of Down syndrome .. (A physical? What does that do??)
Now I was having to call him and tell him I was wrong, and he was right- We were too old to have a baby. Except this time me being wrong was something I couldn’t take back or undo. I couldn’t just apologize and make it better. It was a problem now he and I were going to be left dealing with the rest of our lives.. How do you tell someone YOU made a wrong decision that would forever change THEIR life as well?
Of course he didn’t take it well and we cried about it for several nights. All our hopes and dreams were now gone. Our hopes to retire early, and travel after the kids were away at school, and our children having successfull careers and being independent, and eventually married with children..gone!
I felt like I had a noose around my neck that was never going to go away.
I say all this to say, that I understand where you are at if you just received THAT call from the doctor. Everything your feeling is real, allowed, and right now -not wrong. “That’s a contradiction to what you have been saying!”
Yes it is. But I believe in letting people express their feelings, and emotions and not telling them they are wrong to feel the way they do. Was I wrong to feel that way? No. I was just wrong about what my new future was going to look like. Feelings are never wrong, even when they are wrong… haha.. You must allow yourself to grieve,cry and even be mad at God if that makes you feel better. I sure was! I believe he creates every human with His hands, so how could He do this to me?
You see I had a conversation with God also before I got pregnant. I was DONE having kids. I hate being pregnant (and I say that apologizing to the many women who spend thousand of dollars trying to get pregnant or can’t conceive. ) I don’t enjoy it, I had two beautiful healthy kids already and I did not want to F that up (yes I said that the Lord-pray for me). I told God no, so now God would leave me alone.
Uh yeah, no. He didn’t.. I kept hearing him say “I have another boy I need to get to you. The world needs him here, and I can’t give him to the world, if you don’t allow him come through you”. I mean how do you argue with that?? As soon as I heard the Lord whisper that in my ear, I suddenly became excited about the thought of having another son, despite the fact I just lost all my baby weight and was finally looking good.
So you can imagine my complete anger, resentment and bitterness toward God at this point. I felt like he bamboozled me. I started to see God as a bully again. He knows I always end up doing what He asks of me, even if I don’t see the benefit at the time. Everytime God has asked me to make a sacrifice I didn’t understand, it was ALWAYS for my benefit. My “spiritual dementia” kicked in once again. I forgot that even when things don’t seem right or fair, He is still good and right and fair. He knows us better then we know ourselves, and He knows the path and journey He has for us. I can see that now, but if anyone told me that at that time, you likely would have been deleted from my friend list and blocked on my phone. Especially if you did not have a child with Down Syndrome.
I even started to become jealous of women who had babies in their 40’s whose child didn’t have a diagnosis. For some reason if they did, this would have made me feel better. It would have made my situation more normal, like I wasn’t the one person who messed up.
For some reason, I felt like a failure, and like a fool. I felt like a fool for thinking I could have a child at my old age and everything would be fine. I even met a woman in the supermarket who got pregnant at 47!! Healthy baby… what the heck.. what did I do wrong??
The beauty of writing this now, is all I can think of is what did I do right? What did I do right to deserve this amazing boy called Grayson?
No Down Side 