I am 15 weeks pregnant with our third child, much wanted and much loved. While I was on holiday at the end of August we received the dreaded phone call saying that we were high risk (1 in 17) for DS. I was devestated and cried for a whole week until we went for the CVS. At this point we knew we would continue with the pg and guessed we would rather be prepared than not.
The CVS went well. The scan I had lasted one and a half hours and the doctors were confident that all was well. Our baby has a nose bone, femur length normal, heart normal, nuchal measurement 1.9mm. However, a week ago we received the devestating phone call that no parent wants to receive, our baby has tested positive for DS. Our consultant has told us that our baby is in a 2% minority where they look fine on the scan, most are picked up by a scan. It was my bloods that raised the alarm.
It wasn't until our world came crashing down around us after receiving the news that we started to consider terminating this pregnancy. I am now, a week on, almost at that point but we still have sudden moments on whether we could make a go of this. We always knew that a third would put a strain on our emotions, finances, state of minds etc but now we are faced with even more difficulties than we thought we would 'get by' on. How stupid we were to assume that all would be well. We told our chilren after the scan (6 and 4) and their reactions were precious, they were in love with their sibling from that moment on! We have now told them that our baby is not well and our DS of 6 prays every day that it will get better and be born. It is heartbreaking. We know from all the research that children with Down's are beautiful, much loved individuals but we worry beyond that, when they are adults and the fact that our children will become carers or at least have Power of Attorney issues to deal with.
We are now almost at the point of going for termination. This is not an easy option. I feel sick at the thought of killing our child, that we will need to tell our children it died when we killed it. I feel guilty that so many people would be appalled at what we might do, after all with a ds diagnosis it does have a chance of life, not like Edward's or Patau's. I have found myself in my grief almost wishing the decision would be taken out of our hands, terrible thoughts. To make it worse we are Christians and we do believe that God has blessed us with this little life for a reason and yet we are going against his will in terminating. Our Christian friends will never look at us the same again but I say this and mean this.....NOBODY can understand what this is like until they experience it. The worst grief, sadness, despair you can ever imagine. We are grieving for the loss of what we thought we were going to have and how much different it all is now. We will not be having a termination and taking the decision lightly, we have cried non-stop for 7 days and I don't know how I will ever feel happy again. We still have moments where we think what it would be like to go ahead, hold our newborn in our arms, give our children the sibling they are so desperate for, we know though that is just a short term vision and that long-term it will be so much harder. Good times too, but heartbreak, fear for the future.
Is there anyone is my position? I feel so alone, nobody posts about this much online in fear of being judged or abused by pro-lifers who have never been in this position. Please do not judge me, my heart is breaking.