Spot on, Grey's Anatomy

It's not every day that a TV show turns into a time machine. Most of the time I only play the TV in the background while doing other things and rarely actually sit down and focus on what is on the screen. But lately, I have been strapped to the couch, tears streaming down my face, as I watch 2 characters on Grey's Anatomy go through something that throws my mind and emotions back to February of last year. If you don't watch the show, these 2 doctors have recently discovered that their unborn baby has OI (brittle bone disease) and they don't know the severity or what the future holds for their son.

Jonny watching our 20 week ultrasound.

At my 20 week ultrasound, I was giddy with anticipation over seeing my baby again. We knew by now that she was a girl but now we would get to see all her pieces and parts like her heart and her spine and everything else that makes up a human. My mom and Jonny came with me, just as excited as I was to see her. The ultrasound tech wasn't our usual lady. She was helping out and had been doing ultrasound for years on general body stuff so it was cool to have someone who was happy to be looking at babies instead of tumors. The ultrasound was so neat, we got to see her beating heart and her hands and fingers and toes. She was absolutely beautiful. I noticed towards the end that she was spending a lot of time on the baby's head. She kept telling me that the position the baby was in was making it hard to see the back of her brain. She tried for about 10 minutes and then decided to move forward and finished up. When I saw the other midwife at my office afterwards, she told me that since they couldn't really see the back of the head, that they were going to send me to a specialist that had better equipment so they could hopefully catch a glimpse just to make sure everything was ok. I didn't think anything of it at the time, which is weird now because I consider myself a pretty intuitive person. I figured the baby was just being stubborn and that we would see this specialist sometime in the next few months as a precaution and then be on our way with our perfectly healthy child.


The next day I was at the preschool I taught Spanish at part-time. I remember I was cutting out paper with the days of the week in Spanish on them and my phone rang. It was the specialists office, they wanted to see if we were available to come in the next day and have our ultrasound done. After I made the appointment, I sat for a minute in silence as the realization hit me that something may not be right. Why would they call me so soon? When I got home I looked up "problems with fetus cerebellum" to see if anything would pop up. After about 2 seconds of reading the list, I closed the window and walked away. I read 2 or 3 things and thought to myself, there is no way any of this is relevant, they just couldn't see it so they are covering their bases.

Jonny was planning on meeting me at the hospital where the specialist was. I got their earlier than he did and headed towards the office and texted him directions on how to get there from the parking structure. I got into the waiting room, checked in, and sat down. As I sat there in the quiet, I looked up and saw one of those decorative motivational plaques. I don't remember the exact wording, but the gist was to not worry about things that are out of our control and to pray about them. Holy crap. Something is wrong. They sent me to a specialist who has motivational freaking plaques on her wall. Something is wrong with my baby. Holy crap. By the time Jonny got to the waiting room I was holding in a full blown freak out. Right before they called us in, a pregnant woman and her husband walked out and her eyes were puffy. I almost lost it right then, but by some miracle I kept my cool.

Mira waving hello :)

When the doctor started the ultrasound, I had one last moment of convincing myself that maybe this wasn't what it was slowly starting to seem to be and I was just overreacting. They the she goes "oh yup, right there". She turned to me and said "So from what I can see, it looks like your baby has something called Dandy Walker". I knew that name, it was on the list of terrible things that could be wrong with a baby's cerebellum that I had dismissed the day before. I told her I had read about it. She started talking about it but I wasn't listening. The room was shrinking and all I could feel was Jonny's hand tightly grasping mine and warm tears rolling down my cheeks. It was like my ears were ringing and I couldn't hear anything. I'm assuming during this time she was telling us that Dandy Walker is a malformation of the cerebellum and the vermis between them. The side effects can be barely anything to developmental delays in motor skills and speech, to not being able to walk or talk ever. Then she told us a story about another anonymous family who found out their baby had spina bifida. They decided that their lifestyle would not be the right fit for a special needs baby, so they terminated the pregnancy. It took me a second to realize what she was doing. She was gauging where our thoughts were in reference to a special needs baby, possibly one that would need medical and physical assistance their whole life. We asked if she would be in pain or unhappy. She told us that there isn't evidence of chronic pain and the happiness depends on her environment. Then we agreed, we were 100% in this, no matter what. She talked to us about how often she wanted to see us and printed off some shots she took of the baby's hands and face, and then she left the room because she knew what was about to happen.

I have cried a lot in my life, I'm a pretty emotional person. But I have never cried like this. It's the full body, clinging to your spouse, clutching your belly, deep within your soul sorrow. It was a mourning cry. I was mourning the loss of the perfect child I had imagined. At the time it was like someone had hurt her or damaged her. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that she was always this way, this was who she was. Jonny held me and cried with me. I will tell you what, God knew what he was going when he gave me Jonny, because at that moment, when I was in the deepest pit, Jonny knew exactly what to say. He said a lot of things about how it would be ok and how blessed we were to have her no matter what, but it was the last thing he said that started me on the path of acceptance and peace about what we had just been told. He said "it's funny, but I feel like I know her now. Like we didn't know anything about her before, but now we do and it makes her more real."

That was the beginning of a long and hard journey that we are still on. We didn't know what to expect with Mira, which was by far the hardest part. You have to let go of the need to have control over a situation and just be adaptable. Whatever comes, we work with it and make it better. So far we have been ridiculously blessed. While Mira's issues have evolved into a whole different bag of worms, all the concerns we had about the effects of her Dandy Walker have disappeared as she continues to hit all her developmental milestones on time and even a little early on a few. We have also been blessed with the lessons we have learned because our situation. I have learned that I am never really in control and sometimes you have to let go and go with the flow. I've learned that my strength can run out and that the people you choose to put around you will be the ones who either keep you floating or help you sink. I've learned that my husband is even more incredible than I originally realized and that without him I would be a hot mess. But the most important thing I've learned is that God has my back. He has Jonny's back. He most definitely has Mira's back.

So as I sit and watch people going through the lowest of the low times, I am reminded how far we have come and how much we have to look forward to. Oh and also, Mira is the most awesome kid ever. Here is proof via her 6 month pictures we took today (yes, she is almost 7 months, don't judge me):