The Day Our Lives Changed Forever

Back when we first found out about Sydney Grace, my sister said I should start a blog. I have never been into blogging, facebook, or anything like it before. I never started the blog and it was not until after Sydney was born did our friend Hilary start this one. Since Sydney passed, I have found it very good for me to write down what I am going through. I decided to go back from the very beginning and write down Sydney Grace's story. I plan on writing down all the events before Sydney's birth. I would like to share with you what I have so far.

Day 1
The day our lives changed forever….
It was August 19, 2009, and I was 19 weeks pregnant. I had my ultrasound scheduled for 9:00am. Joel met me at the doctor’s office. I remember waiting and the only thing on my mind was whether or not we would find out the sex of the baby. I so wanted a girl. We already had Rafe and two nephews, so everyone was ready for a girl again. I had myself convinced it was going to be a boy.

They called us back after not having to wait very long. When we walked into the room I recognized the technician as a lady from the island and my church. She started the ultrasound. At first everything seemed fine. She was doing all the measurements and said she was a little small. Sydney was measuring two weeks too small. She did not seem concerned about it. When I had my 8 week ultrasound, Sydney measured 4 days too small. I questioned the doctor about this. He said it was perfectly normal and he was not going to change my due date. We later found out that one of the signs, of Trisomy 18, is the baby measuring small.

The technician had asked at the beginning of the ultrasound if Rafe was excited and what he wanted, a sister or a brother. From the time we found out I was pregnant, Rafe wanted a sister. She could not tell for sure if Sydney was a girl, but said Rafe may have gotten his wish.

Things started getting worrisome when the technician started looking at Sydney Grace’s brain. She said Sydney had two cysts on her brain. She said more babies have these than you realize and they were more than likely harmless, but we would probably be sent to a specialist just to make sure. The rest of the ultrasound went ok until the very end. She could never get good images of Sydney’s heart. She tried for several minutes, trying from several angles and trying to get Sydney to turn around. Finally she stopped, but never said anything was wrong. She went to go get the doctor like normal to go over everything with us. She said we might have to wait awhile for the doctor since she was seeing another patient.

Surprisingly, the doctor came in quick. She was very nice and caring. She started going over the ultrasound pictures. At first everything seemed fine, then everything went wrong. She got to the pictures of my placenta. She said it had things called placental lakes in them. They showed up on the ultrasound as dark spots on my placenta. Next she started looking at the shots of her heart. She stopped and starting pointing at the screen. She said Sydney had a hypoplastic right ventricle. What does that mean? Her right ventricle is not formed. At this point I started crying. I don’t think it hit Joel yet. She continued to talk about her brain and the cysts. I knew it was bad. The doctor said she was very concerned. Joel asked what that meant. She said it was more than likely some chromosomal defect. Like Down Syndrome, we asked. She said yes, but there were other chromosomal problems that were possible. She referred us to a specialist who would be able to help us.

I was upset, but Joel was very positive. He knew something was wrong, but he knew we could handle it. He said God would not give us anything we could not handle. If Sydney had Down Syndrome, then it was our job to help her reach her full potential. He was looking forward to having this special child. That night as we talked to our family, my sister told me about a lady that she worked with. This lady has a special needs child. The lady says a lot of people ask “Why us” to God, but she realized one day, “Why not us.” When she said this to me, I realized God chose us for a reason. We did not know the reason, but we trusted in God. Why not us?

The next day we had an appointment with the specialist. They called me at 9 am in the morning and asked that we come in that day. I remember thinking they were being so nice because they knew school started in a few days and I needed to be seen before I started teaching. I was wrong. They needed me to come in that day because something was really wrong and I had choices to make…