subject: In The Dark About a Birth Defect: Disturbing Results of An Abnormal Ultra-Sound [print this page] In The Dark About a Birth Defect: Disturbing Results of An Abnormal Ultra-Sound
Modern technology is Wonderful! Unfortunately, it is one of those things that can be Both a Blessing and a Curse. As wonderful as it is to see your baby on a little tiny screen in a shadowy outline, the ultra-sound test's purposes is to find things that are WRONG with the baby or the pregnancy in general. The "Curse" part of the ultra-sound is in how it can throw people into an incredible journey in Complete and Utter Darkness!
My name is Raleigh Sanderson and I want to tell you about my own personal experience of discovering that our child would be born with a defect. To this day I regret that I must relate this experience through my wife's eyes since for our fourth pregnancy, my wife went to the first ultrasound on her own. I'm sure I had some "important" meeting or assignment at work that kept me from going with her, or at least I thought those things were more important at the time.
When I came home from work my wife met me outside of the front door. Speaking through trembling lips she said something that I will NEVER forget:
"There's something wrong with the baby."
I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.
We sat down in our front yard on a stone fence, disregarding our lack of comfort, while she related to me the following story:
"I drove to the ultrasound that morning not expecting anything out of the ordinary. At the beginning of the ultrasound the technician was quite chatty and cheerful, as most of them are. She was looking at appendages and told me it was a boy. She took various measurements and was commenting about them along the way, but when she started looking at the baby's head she got quite. (pause) She just took measurements for what seemed like an eternity. After the test was done she simply said, 'You need to take these test results and go see your doctor.' She didn't say anything about what she found."
(When things are out of the "normal" range, the technicians know that they are not trained to say what the actual problems are, so all they can do is get as much information from their test equipment as possible so that someone else can interpret the results.)
"I took that disk and went straight to see my doctor. When he saw the test data he simply told me that the baby has 'hydrocephalus' or 'water on the brain' and that I was going to have to go to a specialist for more information. I still can't believe how 'matter of fact' he was about it. He did not offer any comfort or explanation. He gave me this card and I have an appointment for tomorrow."
She handed me a business card which was crumpled from her squeezing it. She had been sobbing off and on since I had arrived, but now she cried in earnest. I hugged her and did my best to reassure her that things were going to be alright. We just sat there staring at the grass and weeds in our front yard for several more minutes. I remember thinking, "What can I possibly say to comfort her?"
I wanted to cry myself, but that is not what a "man" should do. I had to be the "strong" one, the one who "keeps it together." I wanted to shout! I wanted to put my fist through something! But I couldn't do either of those things, so I stuffed down my feelings.
I told her "Things are going to work out. It will be okay. I'll go with you tomorrow and we'll get through this together."
But the fact remained that neither of us knew anything about what was truly wrong with our unborn baby. It was such a dark and scary place to be.
I could have handled it so much better.
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