Have you ever heard a parent say "this will hurt me more than it will hurt you" before they spank a child. I never understood that. I thought it was a load of crap. If it is hurting you so much stop hitting me and we will both feel better. I think I understand now. I now realise that the thought of hurting your children or the thought that there may be something wrong with them is an attention getter. Last week when we had the ultrasound we were told that baby B had an echogenic bowel. What is that you ask. Well I have quickly become an expert on it so here is what I know. Any time the bowels show up as bright or brighter than the bones it is considered an echogenic bowel. On average 1 in every 200 children present with this. She said it was probably nothing but the Dr. may want to talk to us about it. I will save you some of the details but since last week we have spoken to Dr's, genetic counselors, had multiple tests done and had a few sleepless nights. Here is the cliff note version of what we found out. It could be 1 of 6 different things.
1. It is nothing at all, and this is by far the biggest probability.
2. The baby swallowed some blood and this is what is causing it to show up on ultrasound. This one will fix itself.
3. It is some type of birth defect where the bowels are not forming correctly and this could be addressed by surgery after birth.
4. It is a specific infection that would not cause Andrea any symptoms but would effect the baby. This one is not that big of a deal and can be fixed with medication. We have done a blood test to rule this out. Results early next week.
5. Downs Syndrome- this is unlikely based on several factors. Andrea is 30 yrs old and age is a big factor with Downs. The older you get the higher the risk. I guess it was a good idea on my part to marry a young one. Also there are measurements that can give an indication of Downs and the baby does not have any of these. There is a blood test that we did to give an indication of Downs and we are waiting for those results. It will not be a great indication though because the second baby will throw off the results. There is something called an amniocentesis that will tell definitively if the baby has Downs but there is a 1 in a 1000 chance that the test will cause the babies to die. Being that there is only about a 1% chance of Downs we decided that we were not comfortable with the 1/1000 chance that it would cause her to miscarry. We would not have an abortion if it was positive so why risk it.
6. The biggest concern for us is that this is sometimes a sign of Cystic Fibrosis. Andrea and I both have a family history of CF. Andrea was genetically tested last year before we did the invitro deal and she was shown to not be a carrier of the top most common CF genes. We did not have me tested since it is very probable 66% chance that I am a carrier of the gene. We did have me tested yesterday and those results will not be if for 2 weeks. We are also trying to contact a distant relative of Andreas to see if we can get the specific gene mutations that he has. This may be able to rule out CF if he has one of the most common types that Andrea was not a carrier of. The other hope is that I will hit it lucky with the 33% chance that I am not a carrier. The genetic counselor told us that based on currently known facts there is about a 5% chance that the baby has CF.
This is alot of information to digest but the short of it is that the odds of 2 healthy babies are on our side. We are now waiting for the next ultrasound and the results of all the tests. We may not have a definite answer on everything until they are born, so for now we continue to work with the experts, pray and keep putting everything that is pink and says anything about daddy on the registry.
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