Have you ever been so excited you couldn’t contain it? You felt the energy buzzing, tingling through every limb of your body, a smile adorning your face? That’s how I felt in the days leading up to my 18-week ultrasound. I couldn’t wait to find out the gender of my twins! The week before I had posted a fun guessing game on Facebook: What will I have? Two boys, two girls, a boy and a girl? I had not even the smallest doubt that the appointment today would be anything less than joyous. I had no idea that the pregnancy I had envisioned was about to implode.
Mauricio and I arrived at the clinic and were ushered into the examination room. In the dim light, the technician asked me to lay down, squirted warm jelly on my growing belly, and got right to work moving the transducer across my protruding middle. We watched the grainy images moving on the screen trying to make out to details.
With a cry of delight, I said, “It’s a girl!”
“You have a good eye…yes, it’s a girl,” replied the technician. “And, you’ve also having…” she paused, “…a boy!”
Amazing! We couldn’t believe our good fortune. Mauricio and I grinned at each other as he reached for my hand. Thank you, Lord, for these precious babies! I exalted.
The technician continued to quietly take picture after picture, and then told us she’d inform the doctor of the results, asking us to wait. Five minutes later, a man walked into the room.
“Good morning,” he began. “My name is Dr. Campbell. I’ve had an opportunity to look at the scan, and I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve identified something abnormal with Twin A…”
Twin A was the name given to our little boy. With furrowed brow, I nodded my head, listening intently.
“…something called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia. We’re going to refer you to another clinic where you'll have an in-depth ultrasound. They’ll call you to make an appointment to see them sometime next week.”
This news put a damper on our excitement, but without any further information, we hoped for the best. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had just received a prenatal diagnosis, also called an adverse diagnosis. There was much I didn’t realize at the time, like the severity of the diagnosis, the lack of hope we would be offered, and the lack of support we would receive to continue the pregnancy. That was all to come. But in this moment, we hoped and prayed that whatever the issue was, it would resolve itself by the time we went to the next ultrasound appointment. That bubble would soon burst with spectacular abruptness, but in this moment, we were blissfully unaware.
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