"better"

(written November 23, 2010)

i sent out a text last night to 3 batches of people because i have made myself vulnerable to so many people my phone has to break it into 3 groups to send a text. anyway, this is what the text said: after ultrasound today our odds for down syndrome were lower, baby looks healthy, trusting God for whatever He blesses us with. i don't think i meant to say our odds are all better. i didn't mean we had no risk. i just meant we went from 1 in 2 to something like 1 in 5 at the worst.

the doctor appointment itself was confusing to me. when asked about the nasal bone, both the sonographer and the perinatologist said it is too late for that to mean anything, but last time the peri based her 1:2 odds on its absence. this doc said because the baby is growing and is a good size and that he wouldn't worry.

so this is what i think: i think the doc spoke as from the Lord to my heart. he basically said, don't worry about this. you cannot see the future. your baby may have downs. or you could have a child with autism, or a cancer diagnosis, or lose a child in a car wreck. you can't know the future. right now, you need to focus on what you have, focus on the baby you have in your arms, on your family. whatever God gives you, you will do great with.

but then i have the responses of the whole world who received my text. they all seem to have taken it as a "never mind, we don't have downs." and i don't know if we do or not. i will still be seen monthly. i will still be monitored weekly at the end if the kidneys don't normalize. i think if we had had a different perinatologist we might have had a different interpretation. we Just Don't Know.

and here's the tough little thing - i have come to see the baby in my belly as a baby with an extra chromosome. that's who i think is in there. that is who i'm looking forward to meeting, because that is who i thought God was making. all the people praising God for not giving me that T21 baby are rejecting the baby i want. they are very excited for me, but i feel like i've lost someone.

i'm also having to let go of my pride, and acknowledge that maybe God isn't giving me a baby with Ds because i can't be that good of a mom, that i wouldn't be able to make sure he got everything he needed.

i feel like a fool, having told so many loved ones, sometimes in tears, and now it looks like there wasn't ever that big a risk, and why did i even go there anyway.

but mostly i'm disappointed, because i have loved and potentially lost an imaginary little baby with an extra chromosome, and at the moment of finding out he was only in my heart and never in my uterus (maybe), i also learned that the rest of the world is seeming glad, thrilled that he went away - nobody wanted him but me.

i do not want to be disappointed when my baby comes. for this reason, i will set my heart to receive what to me is the less desirable option - i will anticipate a baby like all the others. and if He ever does in fact trust me with a little 'tongue-er' (nick's name for Ds), i will be the one dancing for joy that God trusted me enough to give me such a reward.