The baby’s nickname is Pokemon. That’s what happens when you’re sitting at the dinner table and you ask your 3-year-old what we should nickname the baby.
“Pokemon!” Emelia cheered! Olivia wholeheartedly agreed after giving up the name Peanut, and so Pokemon it is.
I received my genetic testing results back this week and it isn’t what I expected.
I got the phone call while working at the kitchen table.
(Fun side note: In addition to not having ANY interest in crocheting, I also cannot stand to be in my office downstairs. I worked down there for two weeks or so after finding out I was pregnant, more or less because being upstairs had the smells from the kitchen. And then suddenly, I had the opposite reaction and the thought of being down in my office literally made me want to gag. No idea why. Can’t explain it. Doesn’t make any sense, but there it is.)
So anyway, I was working on my laptop in the kitchen table Thursday and I got a call from the genetic counselor I was working with. This was the call I was waiting for, not only to make sure everything was genetically good with the baby but so that I would know the sex and hopefully this would help me bond with the baby more.
It wasn’t good news.
Well, of course, it wasn’t the worst news I could get. But she said my results came back as low fetal fraction, meaning basically my blood was too diluted to get enough fetal DNA. Odds are it’s because I’m too fat, which really pisses me off because no one ever told me that could be a possibility. If, instead of my clinic just wanting to cover the whole idea up, they actually said, “Hey Risa, there’s a good chance because of your BMI you may have an inconclusive test result.” I would have said, “Oh noes” and then maybe I wouldn’t have gone through with it. Or maybe I would have gone in with that thought in the back of my head and it wouldn’t have been so crushing.
However, the counselor told me it could also mean there was something wrong with the baby. Triploidies, trisomy 13, and trisomy 18 could indicate having a low fetal fraction. But, she reassured, odds are, it’s because of the blood volume.
I was already tearing up on the phone, trying to write down all she was saying while forcing myself not to sob out loud. Not only has it felt everything has been going wrong from the start of this pregnancy, but now this?
Even at the very least assuming the baby is healthy, I don’t get to find out anything? I still can’t find out who is in my uterus, and I went through all that trouble with the clinic, pushing to get the referral, sitting through a genetic counseling visit…for nothing?
She said I could do the first trimester US as a next step, which will take measurements of the baby’s nuchal fold, and have another blood test that can measure certain proteins. The US can tell us a lot, she said, so while the blood work can take a few weeks to come back, I could know at that appointment if there was a concern.
Oh, she said, but today is Thursday and you have until Saturday to get the test, but they’re not open Saturday, so you have until tomorrow.
Oh, and the only appointment we have is in the downtown St. Paul location at 8:15 in the morning.
I scheduled the appointment and then cried.
I rearranged the schedule for Friday. The girls were supposed to do their school’s daycare program and we had Emelia’s conferences. The school wouldn’t be open that early to get there and I pretty much can’t function before 11 am. My mom agreed to take the girls overnight so we wouldn’t have to deal with getting them ready so early in the morning.
That morning, I prayed to the morning sickness gods I would do okay in the car. Chris got me McDonald’s breakfast which was all I could stand to eat until I had about half of it and gag gag gag.
We made it there on time, luckily.
The appointment was supposed to last over an hour and it lasted about 15 minutes.
The tech took multiple measurements of the baby’s size, over and over.
“I’m sorry, but if the baby is over a certain size, we can’t get an accurate nuchal fold measurement,” she apologized, “and it looks like you’re baby is just measuring too big.”
Oh, and you have an anterior placenta again, so good luck feeling your baby right now.
Sonofabitchwhore I wanted to scream.
“So…you can’t get anything?” I asked.
Baby Pokemon continued wiggling and flipping, oblivious to everything outside my uterus.
She left to talk with the doctor and when she came back, she apologized again.
“What about the blood test, at least?” I asked
I’m sorry, she said, the blood test wouldn’t be accurate either. At least, the anatomy measurements taken seemed to indicate a healthy baby.
We rode most of the way home in silence.
“It sucks that this is yet another setback,” Chris said. I just cried. I wanted to blame someone so I blamed my clinic. If they would have given me the information, and sent out the referral sooner, I could have had the NIPT earlier. That test probably would have come back as low fetal fraction, I would have cried and then scheduled the first trimester US sooner, and the baby would have been the right size to get a measurement and while we still wouldn’t know the sex, I would have had some of the anxiety of a genetic problem eased.
In some of the darkest moments of this pregnancy, all I can think of is, I was so much happier before. So far, all this pregnancy has done has broke me, pissed me off, made me deal with a ton of medical crap I never wanted to deal with again, made me cry, dry heave, sleep, and be an absent mother to my girls.
Why does literally everything have to go wrong in this pregnancy? I would wonder to myself and to my therapist.
I know when and if this baby comes, everything will be better. I will love this baby as fiercely as I love my girls. But right now? When it just feels like a parasite sucking the life out of me and causing all this unnecessary drama and bad stuff? It’s hard. I’m not even going to sit here and say that I’m still grateful for this opportunity to be pregnant on my own. I’m not grateful. At all. I know I will be one day, barring everything working out. In the here and now, I just want to curl up under my covers and shut out everything.
I haven’t announced anything on Facebook. I’m not ready for it yet, because I’m not in the place to accept the congratulations and excitement because all I want to do is cry and wish for my old life back.
“The love you’re going to have for your baby doesn’t mean you can’t struggle right now,” my therapist told me last week, “Everything that you’re feeling, the anger, the stress, the retriggering—it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to love and cherish this baby in the future. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I’m trying to focus on those words. I know things are going to get better. I know my mind is going to evolve over time and by the time I’m holding this baby, I’m confident I’m not going to have those feelings. I’ve had two kids with two very difficult pregnancies. I can do it again.
The only difference is, I thought I was never going to have to go through this again. So it makes sense why the emotions seem so much more stronger now. Why I have so much anger and fear and annoyance and frustration and whatever you want to say.
I’ll get there. But right now…. ugh.
