That weekend following the sonogram, we named our son Luke. It was a name we both loved and easily agreed upon. We wanted to name him right away so that people could be praying for him by name. (He still does not have a middle name, but we are working on that.)
By God's grace, we had a previously scheduled regular appointment with our OB scheduled for the Monday following that first sonogram. While the weekend was a blurr of prayers, tears and sharing the news with friends and family, we also managed to compile a giant list of questions for our doctor. I have to back up and share that prior to becoming pregnant, my OB/GYN I've seen for years retired from delivering babies. Her retirement required that we begin seeing a new doctor when we discovered we were pregnant. I was initially apprehensive about this, but looking back now, I can plainly see that God brought Dr. Nichols into our lives at the exact right time. She has been nothing short of an angel for us during this storm and we feel absolutely blessed to be under her care.
A lot of times what happens when you go see your doctor is that you are given a 10-15 minute appointment time slot, the nurse comes in and does her thing and then the doctor whooshes in and sees you for a few minutes, chats about what the nurse wrote down in the chart and then is off to see the next patient. However, that was not our experience with Dr. Nichols on the day we needed her most.
She spent over an hour with us that sad Monday morning. She took her white coat off and was just a brilliant woman and fellow mother sitting with us in our sorrow answering every single question we had. She identified Luke's official diagnosis as Bilateral Renal Agenesis. She explained that his body never developed kidneys or a bladder. Which she described as absolutely "not life compatible" outside of the womb. She spent time educating us about baby's development and how their little bodies begin processing the amniotic fluid through thier bodies to strengthen their systems so that when they are born, they are strong enough to survive. In a healthy baby, their kidneys process the amniotic fluid through their urine therefore generating more fluid. Their tiny lungs begin "breathing" the fluid in and out and this is what develops their lungs and strengthens them so they can breathe after being born. Therefore Luke, without kidneys or a bladder to develop the fluid and keep it moving through his body, his lungs have nothing to breathe in and his lungs will also not develop at all as a result of this. We learned that a mother's body only produces a certain ammount of amniotic fluid and the baby generates the rest as they build strength to sustain thier life ouside of their mama's belly.
I understood then why the Perinatologist who did the sonogram was asking about potential fluid leaks, as he was not seeing hardly any amniotic fluid in the womb- a key indicator of this condition. A normal pregnancy at this point has anywhere from 5-20cm of fluid and I have 1-2cm. Dr. Nichols assured us that Luke is in no way suffering right now because my body is doing all the breathing and waste removal for him, it's only when he's outside of my body that there will be a life threatening problem as he will not be able to do any of that for himself.
She also shared with us that babies who do not have much fluid in the womb, tend to not move around very much as they tend to be down where the fluid is present and also have a much greater risk of passing away in-utero due to cord compression. The fluid acts as a buffer to keep the umbilical cord safe, where as if there is not a lot of fluid there to cushion it, the risk is much greater for Luke's life line to be cut off should he accidentally press on it the wrong way or for too long.
She provided us with the most up-to-date medical research and information on Bilateral Renal Agenesis and made herself available to us should we have any questions or need anything. She discussed with us our options for future care for Luke and scheduled another appointment with us for the following week to talk about the future after we'd had our second sonogram officially confirming the diagnosis.
The most important thing she did for us though was to just be present with us. She was real. She was honest. She was not hopeful and I was grateful to her for her genuine authenticity even though I know it must have been difficult for her. As a mother herself, you could see how much she genuinely cared for Luke already and how much she cares for us. We are so thankful for that time we had with her. She never once made us feel like we were causing her to run late, or were inconveniencing her. The news she delivered was not hopeful, but we at least felt more informed after talking with her. We were able to hear what she was saying and had a better idea of how to begin looking at our future, how to prepare ourselves and more importantly, how to best care for and pray for our sweet baby Luke. She was an angel with invisible wings as we are SO thankful for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment