~~~ Flashback Post ~~~
Reality Check (February 11, 2015)
Early the following morning the doctor himself called me on my cell phone and asked to have my husband and I come in as soon as possible. You know it's serious when the doctor himself dials your number.
Brian picked me up from work and we drove in silence to the clinic.
We checked in and were nearly immediately ushered back to a room. I breathed in and out slowly and fully trying to keep myself collected while staring down at my hands. A quiet voice beside me simply said "You know, if it's a girl, we're going to have to call her Faith. That's what it's going to take {referencing our Christian faith} to get us through this. Faith MaryJo." My mother's name is Mary. My husbands mother's name is Jo. I couldn't think of a more perfect name. I stated what I wanted the name to be if it was a boy, a name that meant "At the Cross," with my fathers name as the middle name. We smiled through our tears. Whether girl or boy, in less than two minutes we'd agreed on names ~ both rich with Biblical meaning and family history.
The doctor walked in then, sat down, looked at us and went right to the details. We were told that the ultrasound showed there was a pocket of fluid on the back of the head and neck area of the baby. It could mean three basic things: 1- it could actually be nothing 2- it could be a genetic abnormality, such as Trisomy 21 (also known as Down Syndrome) or 3- it could be a sign of a heart defect. He was fearing with my history and the fact that I'd been bleeding for the last three months that I was probably in the stages of a miscarriage. Due to my "advanced maternal age" and the immediate issues showing on the ultrasound, he wanted us to get in to the specialty clinic as soon as possible. He ordered some more blood work to check hormone levels and wanted me to come back three days later to check them again (if certain hormone levels showed a double or triple increase that would be a sign my body was still trying to carry the pregnancy, no increase or drop in numbers would indicate my body trying to end or miscarry the pregnancy).
We left the clinic officially still "pregnant", but we did not get to experience even one "Congratulations!" Not one packet of information or book on prenatal care was offered to us. All we carried out was a little business card with a doctors name we'd never heard of and an address to a clinic an hour and a half away. We were told we'd get a call when they knew the date and time we were to arrive.
We drove back to my work. We gathered everyone at the large staff table, a table usually filled with laughter, inner-office banter and jokes, along with deep prayer and serious conversations about growing God's Kingdom... one of my happiest and "safest" places to gather. That day my husband and I looked at the faces of my co-workers, all dear dear friends, and choked out the reality of the few details we had just been given. We cried. We prayed. We were surrounded by love and support.
Without already fully "knowing," I think my husband and I deep inside already just "knew." We maybe didn't know the extent of how hard the road ahead of us was going to be, but we "knew" we were on the first steps of a journey of loss we didn't ask to be on.
Our faith, our trust, and our belief that "God is good, all the time" would soon be rocked to the very core, testing us beyond anything either of us had ever experienced before.
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