The day my life changed forever
Having a child changes your life forever. When you get married it is a conversation that eventually comes up, if it had not already come up while you were dating. For my husband and I, we knew even when we were dating, that we wanted to have kids. By the time we were married I had already formulated a master plan. I am excellent at planning. I wanted two or three kids, we would start trying after we had been married three years, I would get pregnant quickly, and have my first child at 26 years old, just like my mom.
Everything was going as I planned it when in August 2017 we found out that we were pregnant! We were over the moon excited. We could not wait to start planning our life as a family of three. We started by moving into our first home and ordering paint and furniture for the baby’s room. We talked about what we would do if the child had my allergies or family hearing loss or if they needed glasses like my husband. We were proud of ourselves for talking about every potential situation that might come up with our new arrival. But our lives changed forever when we went to our 20 week ultrasound.
Instead of being surprised by our baby’s gender, we were told that there was something wrong with our child’s head. The doctor shared that it was most likely a diagnosis called Spina Bifida which is a spinal defect. This meant that our precious baby likely had a sac on their spine that was pulling down on their brain. Our doctor sat us down, looking extremely somber, and started giving us options. The options they gave us were to either terminate the pregnancy, have in-utero surgery performed, or just do nothing and wait to do something when the baby was born. I was overwhelmed. All of our planning seemed silly now. I was NOT prepared for this and had no way to prepare. We went from planning a gender reveal party to making some serious life-changing choices.
I cried into my husband’s shoulder, just shaking and completely in shock. I just kept thinking, “I cannot do this!”. How can I be in charge of such life and death decisions for someone I already loved so much and who was completely dependent on me. Eventually, I was able to compose myself and something clicked in my head. I knew what we needed to do. Nate and I discussed it and decided to choose the in-utero surgery.
After everything was decided, things started moving quickly. Only 4 weeks after our 20 week appointment, I was having surgery at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. During this surgery they removed the sac on our baby’s spine and then put the baby back in and helped keep me pregnant for the next 3 months. This involved a lot of unfun medicines and bedrest. The surgery was rough, but it was a huge success. Nothing was completely fixed, but I know that this surgery saved our baby’s life. The baby, who we now knew was a little girl, would still have some paralysis and would need a shunt. Even with all of that our baby girl would get to live a happy and full life. While I was on bedrest, I started to think about how I would raise her. I knew things would be different, but I started preparing to give my daughter the best life possible and chance to grow.
Even though this whole process was terrifying, I would not change a thing. My husband and I made the right choice for our little girl and today she is 4 years old living her best life! If I could go back and talk to myself in that moment in the doctor’s office, I would give myself a big hug and tell myself that even though my life will be changed forever, it would definitely be for the better!