Ultra Sound & Baby Doctor

August 28, 2014

       Again we made our way up to Salt Lake early in the morning for the ultrasound appointment at 8:30 a.m.  We had our sweet neighbor and friend, Becky Pendleton, volunteer to come over in the morning and help get our kids off to school and watch Lincoln for the day.  Once again I am so grateful for willing and loving friends that my kids love and I trust.

This was an exciting time.  In fact, it was the first ray of sunshine in a long time.  I was really nervous because of course I want a girl and I just knew it was a boy- but really at this point who the heck cares- a healthy baby and healthy mom is all I care about...RIGHT?? (NOT.)  We got in and they did all the normal stuff, measurements, checking all the organs, looking at the brain, and spine.  Finally it was time to see what the sex is.  Well by now in all our other ultrasounds we knew exactly what we were having, but this little stink would not give us anything.  A couple times we thought we saw girl and then we would think we were seeing boy. Then the technician would say oh that’s just umbilical cord.  Well, we tried forever and I even got up and walked and went to the restroom...we did everything to try and get the baby in a good position.  After 1.5 hours, not joking, she went and had the person who looks at the pictures read them and make sure she had taken all the pics needed and they decided that they were 70% sure it was a girl.  WHAT!! How are we supposed to go home and have a "guess that baby" party with the boys?  What do we make a cake that is 70% pink and the rest blue?  Seriously…
Oh, well. We DID find out that our baby was looking really good and secretly I was thinking it was a girl because all our boys measured about 2 weeks ahead of schedule by 20 weeks. They are so big- but this baby only measured 3 days early.  (Yay. Maybe I'll finally have a 7 or 8 pounder.)  I will say that this long ultrasound was a tender mercy for me as I was able to just sit there and enjoy watching this little miracle inside of me.  I felt so blessed and knew that we were in for a ride together but we would fight to get her/him here safely.

Well the fun was over as we made our way to meet with Dr. Silva our OBGYN specialist.  This was my 3rd or 4th day of appointments and they all last forever and I am always starving by the time we leave.  Seriously, they need food for pregnant ladies doing testing all day...water doesn’t cut it.  Anyway, the doc came in and right off the bat it turns into a difficult conversation full of tears.  He like everyone else acknowledged that there is no easy answer but my life is very important.  He said he wished he had a ton of evidence on this but he didn’t… sure this had happened 30 times and most of the time it all works out great and the baby is healthy.   However he did say that he is here to get a healthy baby also, and he won’t take a baby if it’s not going to make it.  We were very frank with him, too.  At this point we had no test results that could tell us if the cancer was spread farther than we already knew, so all of this was hypothetical.  We told him we really wanted to try some natural things if the oncologist would give us anytime.  We told him we didn't like the plan of doing chemo while I was carrying a baby and we would love to hold out until our baby could be born VERY safely-- not kind of safely. He listened and for once understood and even said he’d work with us if the cancer was giving us time.  He told us that we really needed to study our options out and be careful. I have to share my impressions I was having at this time. Here I am sitting in an office talking about my fate and the fate of my unborn baby with so many other factors to consider, like 4 kids and a husband. I am very much aware how important these factors are and everything the Doctors are telling me makes perfect sense, but the clear message in my heart and in my mind was, "you cannot do chemo at this time." It wasn't fear or the protecting mom feelings it was just a knowledge that there is another way for me right now and starting chemo is not it. How do you explain that to your doctor? They have experience and a ton of studies to back them up and I have "The spirit is telling me there is another way."  We did our best to share what we were feeling and we left feeling confident in this Doctors abilities and grateful for his willingness to work with us if our tests turned out good. In the mean time we were working and praying hard to find that "other way." In the Bible Dictionary it defines faith as..."Faith is to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true (Heb. 11:1; Alma 32:21), and must be centered in Jesus Christ in order to produce salvation. To have faith is to have confidence in something or someone. The Lord has revealed Himself and His perfect character, possessing in their fulness all the attributes of love, knowledge, justice, mercy, unchangeableness, power, and every other needful thing, so as to enable the mind of man to place confidence in Him without reservation."   Today faith is what I'm holding onto.  How grateful I am that there is a loving Savior who possesses these attributes, knows, and loves me, and whom I can trust in.  This knowledge gives me the strength to have Faith in the words of the spirit, "You can't do chemo right now, there is another way."   

We went home and told the boys the doctors couldn’t tell for sure what we were having but they were all very excited about the 70% girl prediction.  It was good to have a night at home with the boys. In fact, we have a whole weekend all to ourselves, and all I wanted to do was gather my family around me and hold them close.