Welcome

Hi there, welcome to Waverly’s page. This is my first time blogging and it’s for such unfortunate reasons. I’ve decided to do this as a way to cope with my emotions and keep friends and family updated. I have a private Facebook group that I used to keep them updated on strictly medical info, this is more so a blog for me. So for those that have found this page by doing immense Google searches after finding yourself in similar shoes, I am sorry.

I will do a quick introduction for those that are not familiar. My name is Emily and my husband’s name is Jim. We’ve been together for 8+ years, and married for 2+ years. We welcomed our first child, Maverick Apollo, a day after our first wedding anniversary. He was born on September 26, 2017 at 11:27pm weighing 7 pounds 5 ounces and was 21 inches long. He puts a smile on our face every single day. We also adopted two dogs, Loki from the Bahamas and Thor from Puerto Rico. They make our life very interesting.

We both grew up in South Jersey and currently live right out side of Ocean City. Jim can’t live more than 10 minutes from the beach... (neither can I, lol). Jim is a paramedic for a living, often working many overtime shifts. He really loves what he does, and he is quite good at it. I am a LPN, but I work a more relaxed schedule. When Maverick was born I dropped down to per diem status, so I pick the days I want to work. (I’ve never been more grateful of Jim for allowing me to really focus on being a mom).

Now that you have a little insight on our family, let me introduce Waverly’s story. We found out we were pregnant on December 18, 2018. Jim was more happy than I was. I mean of course I was happy, but I didn’t know if I was ready for another baby just yet! I was feeling the typical mom guilt, thinking about how much Maverick’s life would be changing. The guilt lasted for about a week and then I increasingly got more excited. I made my first OB appointment, did the usual bloodwork which confirmed the pregnancy. We had a little scare because along with HCG bloodwork, they also tested my progesterone levels (they didn’t test this with Maverick). My progesterone levels came back very low! Of course, I don’t know what my “normal” is since that was the first time I tested, for all I know I could’ve had low levels with Maverick as well. But I resorted to Google and all that kept coming back was miscarriage. I freaked out. I could not stop crying. I was 7 weeks at the time. I had no obvious signs of miscarriage, the pregnancy was feeling just as it had with Maverick. But I couldn’t stop worrying and I couldn’t stop praying. Eventually I got prescribed progesterone supplements that I was on for a month. Those pills are the worst thing ever, they made all the pregnancy symptoms 100 times worse. I was so happy when I took the last pill.

Our first ultrasound was January 9th and I was so relieved to see the little flicker of the heartbeat. Of course the baby didn’t look like a baby at this point, just a big blob, but I instantly fell in love. I was going to my usual OB appointments, everything was going extremely smooth. I was blessed with such an easy pregnancy with Maverick, and at this point it was looking the same.

We did sneak peak testing on January 24th which told us our baby was in fact a girl! How perfect, our little family had the final puzzle piece.

On February 15th, we had some genetic testing done and the NT scan. The ultrasound went great! After the tech was done, the maternal fetal medicine doctor came in and said everything looked good... except the baby’s legs. They were measuring a little short. She said it could just be the positioning, and really didn’t make a big deal about it. Jim and I joked because Maverick had short legs (compared to his long torso), so we thought our baby girl would be the same. The doctor asked us to come back before the anatomy scan to have another look.

So that brings us to today, March 14th. We did the second round of genetic testing (all of which came back low risk) and then got called back for the scan. I was so excited to see her again. The tech was rather quick, hardly spoke. I thought it was a little odd, but maybe she was having a bad day. She said she would have the doctor go over the scan and then she’ll be in. About 20 minutes passed before not one, but two doctors came in. They greeted themselves, made small jokes and then the scan started. “The femurs are definitely short and bowed” the other doctor chimed in “don’t mind us as we think out loud”. “Arms are short and bowed as well”. I was starting to get concerned “So what does that mean?” The doctor replied “well we are trying to figure that out, right now it looks like skeletal dysplasia but there are over 500 types so we are trying to figure this out”. I took a big gulp and I started to zone out, staring at the ultrasound screen. I heard the doctor say the ribs are short, her chin is recessed. Her heart and lungs looked fine. However the small rib cage would become a problem as the organs continued to grow. The doctor talked about options of termination “we can do a d&c which a lot of people choose to do or you can go with labor and are able to hold the baby.” I nodded, not really grasping anything that he was saying. They continue with the ultrasound “the bowels look bright.” “Ah, could just be the ultrasound machine. But they’re definitely bright”. I started to feel so uneasy, just staring at the screen. The doctors suggest that we meet with the genetic counselor and see about doing an amniocentesis to hopefully get a diagnosis and see if this is genetic or just a freak mutation. The one doctor leaves the room. And the other doctor says she’s sorry, and they would support whatever we choose. We don’t owe an explanation. That’s when I lost it. She apologized a few more times and said she would give us a few minutes. Jim and I just cried for a few minutes, not really saying anything. We got our composure somewhat back and 10 or so minutes passed and the one doctor came back in, he wanted to look at the heart again. I don’t remember if there was anything wrong with the heart, I honestly was so zoned out at this point. He then said that we can see the genetic counselor whenever we’re ready. We met with her, she got our history she asked what we wanted to do and if we wanted to do an amniocentesis. She said insurance may not cover it and may cost thousands of dollars. She said the results could take 3-5 weeks, so if we were thinking about termination based off of the results we didn’t have much time because of NJ laws. So we agreed to do it that day. It was scheduled for 1pm. When they were ready, they called us back. They took blood from me and then did the amniocentesis which surprisingly didn’t hurt that much at all. They then sent us to the waiting room while waiting for the rhogam shot (I’m A- blood). Finally got the shot and after more than 5 hours in maternal fetal medicine we were on our way. We left the hospital and were in a state of shock.