The Beginning

April  1, 2009, that was THE day.. the day the phone rang with the heart wrenching news.

I was at work that day, sitting at my desk, about 18 weeks preggo, weighing in at 152lbs! (ha I weigh just a *tad* more at the current time)

We had just gone to the doctor the Friday before where we found out that we-were-having-a-BOY!

So when the doctor called the previous day and left a message to call her back, it was a bit alarming. It didn’t help that we couldn’t get a hold of her the next morning. She was conveniently busy delivering a baby. I probably called the dr’s office 20 times.

Finally she was calling me back and I quickly answered. There I was at work, where I sat, at my desk.

“You have a few minutes to talk?”

“Yeah sure” I mean it couldn’t be anything real bad, right?

“Are you sure? I can call back at a better time” she asked.

“Right now works” I told her.

And just like that, I heard her breathe, I heard her take in a deep breath and she braced herself for what she was about to tell me. I heard the sadness in her voice.

“There appears to be something wrong with the baby. There is a bright spot on the ultrasound, an echogenic bowel; this is a marker for Down syndrome”

Honestly, she lost me somewhere at “something wrong with the baby”, I mean, WHAT does she mean, “wrong with the baby”… and echogenic what? What the heck is that? At that time I heard echogenic bowl. There is a bowl in my baby’s stomach? What is she telling me? Down syndrome, what the HECK IS THAT as well… Down syndrome. This terminology, I don’t understand.

But by then I was already a mess, tears were flowing, heart was aching, stomach was in knots!

With a shaky voice I asked, “… But it could be anything right?”

She said something about, yes maybe, maybe it is nothing that will repair itself on its own or maybe require surgery shortly after birth, and this and that.  I just wanted to find some comfort from all that she was saying.

This little boy, that I loved so much, and I had not even met him yet, this little boy, that we wanted so badly, he was being ripped away from me before I even got to see his face.

Somehow we finished that conversation, and for a minute I just sat at my desk. Tears splashing on my papers in front of me. I gathered all of my courage to get up from my chair and hurried over to the restroom.

I locked myself in there. Leaned against the hard cold door, it offered me no comfort. And I slowly slid down the door and unto the floor. Not knowing, not understanding. Holding my bump, where my son so peacefully rested.

Had I known then, what I know now.