sommer perkins
03-11-2007, 11:46 PM
Hello everyone, our story begins in June 2006. We found out we were pregnant and was scared to death. We had had five previous pregnancy's which had all lead to miscarrages, none lasting more that eight weeks. I was approximately five weeks along at the time. We did not make a doctor's appointment until July 9th. At that time, I was still getting sick and our hopes were high. Our doctor did an unltrasound and found out that we had been pregnant with twins but one had passed at seven weeks. The other one had a strong heartbeat and I was nine weeks along. We were estatic. We had never carried a child this long. We just knew things were going to be o.k. My doctor recommended that we see a high risk obstetrician. An appointment was scheduled for the following week. At that time, and ultrasound was done and our baby was growing and doing well. The doctor did see some thickness on the back of the baby's neck but indicated he was not worried at that time. He wanted to see me back in two weeks. On August 1st, we returned to the doctor to discover the thickness on the back of the baby's neck had gotten worse. The baby was still growing and his heartbeat was strong. At that visit our doctor recommended doing chronic villa sampling to determine if the baby had a chromosome dificency. We decided to do the testing the very next day. It took nine long days to get the results back, when we did we found out that the baby did have a chromosome deficiency (18p syndrome). At that time we were given the choice of continuing the pregnancy or having an abortion. Our doctor informed us that this perticular genetic disorder was not compatable with life and he expected me to miscarry at any point in time. He informed us that even if the baby did survive, that he would have severe mental retardation. Never imagined we would be making a decision like this in our life. As time went on, our little boy was growing and had a strong heartbeat. We made the decision to continue the pregnancy and let nature take it's course. Seeing that we had already lost six, we could not understand why this pregnancy was lasting. We had doctor visits and ultrasounds every three weeks. Each time the prognosis was still the same. Our baby's brain was not developing and he had severe swelling and lots of fluid on the brain. At about 28 weeks, we discovered more distrubing news. Our baby had a severe heart defect and only had two chambers. We continued to enjoy every minute we had with our baby and expected to deliever at any time. The pregnancy continued and we scheduled to induce when we were 39 weeks along. On February 6 at 2:16 a.m. our heavenly angel Jacob Alexander was stillborn (which was on my father's birthday). He weighed 5lbs 9 1/2 ounces and was 18 inches long. My husband was able to help the nurse bathe him and we were able to spend the next 6-8 hours holding our perfect son. I spend everyday thinking about him and miss touching his little body. I have so many different emotions and it has taken me a long time to share our story. I so enjoy reading the stories and know that their are people that are going through the same thing as we are. Thanks for letting me share.