Baby Update

Looks just like daddy!

Okay, I have finally had enough time and patience and desire to put my thoughts in writing so here it goes for some of you this will be new news for others you will be catching up, so here it goes. We found out we were pregnant on January 11th of this year. It was a huge surprise to both of us since we were never to get pregnant without medical intervention anyway, KOPOW! (Some of you are laughing right now!) So I go to my midwife, she is a lovely woman, and get everything confirmed....yep you are pregnant. "Nursing only works as birth control if it is done exclusively, Paulette" nurse Sylvia chuckles. "Thanks", I smiled.

Time for the ultrasound! according to my records I should have been about 7 weeks along by the time I had the ultrasound, but while we were there, the tech was unable to locate a baby or a heartbeat. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, I thought. My midwife calls a few days later to say I am no longer pregnant and I would need to come in for a D and C. Were we sad. Very sad. But not as sad as Payton. She cried and cried because she had been praying we would have another baby. We talked to her and said sometimes God has other plans and we have to accept them. She continued to pray we would get pregnant again. She just knew our family was not finished.

Anyway, you may want to go get a drink this is a long story trust me. I have to go in for blood work before the D and C can be preformed. Ta Da! The blood work says you are still pregnant. Confusion!!!!! "Go for another ultrasound", Latisha says. She is my other midwife. I go to the another ultrasound not really expecting anything. Michael waits outside, while the test is being given. Lo and behold not only is there a baby there is a VERY strong heartbeat. Thank heavens! We are both so overjoyed we can't doing anything but smile. We still do not know why at seven weeks this kid decided not to show its face. Telling Payton the news was by far the best feeling I had had in a long time. You would have thought I had just told her we will have Christmas everyday for the rest of her life.

She screamed , "I knew it, I knew, I knew the baby did not go back to heaven"! She was really excited. For those of you wondering why we told her so early in the pregnancy, had it not been for Payton, I would have never known I was pregnant in the first place, she told me.

So now that we are pregnant we were still rather reserved because this process took almost three weeks to confirm so we were crazy this entire time. Blood work comes back, I get another phone. "Hi Paulette, this is Latisha, we need you to come in so when can talk about your blood work". ????????????? Is what I was thinking, but of course I went in. This is what I found out:

Latisha: Paulette your Hemoglobin is unusually high!

Paulette: So what does that mean?

L: Well, according to the blood work you are the carrier of Beta Thallsemmia.

P:Beta Thallsemmia?, Please explain.

L:It basically means that if it is passed on to your unborn baby you could miscarry or the baby would not be able to survive long because it could not produce Hemoglobin.

P:Interesting, I thought. What is our next course of action?

L: Your husband will need to be tested and in the mean time you both need to see a geneticist.

P: Okay, set up the appointment.

We go to the appointment, only to find out they cannot test Michael there (they thought they could but our insurance said no, he was not technically the patient. So since we have no results on Michael, it made no sense to do the amniocentesis. I was very relief those don't seem like much fun. Any way we are counseled and we find out I can lived in very high places like Colorado and would be a good candidate to climb Mt. Everest. Yeah for me. We also find out that Black folk are not the dominant carrier of this gene, Mid Easterners and people of Greek decent are. (now I am more into genealogy then ever. By the way there was a one in four chance this baby would have this disorder if Michael and I are both carriers.

We received all of this information the day before we were to leave on vacation. So this meant we had to wait another week to get the blood test done. We get back from vacation Michael has the blood test done and TADA! He is free and clear of any trace of the gene. Although his cholesterol is a little high (will blog later about his new OBSESSION with trans fats). So once again we are super happy and can't wait for our newest additions arrival. So will soon have Payton and Phoenix tested to see if they are carriers. But as of right now our lives could not be better.