You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice. — Bob Marley

Second trimester: “The honeymoon trimester” — when morning sickness fades, energy comes back, your bump starts to show, and strangers begin smiling at you. We certainly didn’t expect to begin our second trimester at our 12-week ultrasound learning that our baby boy had a 50/50 chance of making it to term, and that if he were to make it, there was a 80-90 percent chance he would have a moderate to severe health condition.

The four weeks that followed were the longest four weeks of my life. Brian and I grew more in our relationship in that month than we had in over three years of being together. We learned quickly that we dealt with fear and uncertainty in different ways, and that we could misinterpret each other’s coping strategies. Brian feared that my resolve to find hope and optimism prevented me from appreciating the potential that everything may not be OK, and left me vulnerable to heartbreak. Meanwhile, his willingness to talk about the possibility of losing our child triggered my fear, and I felt that his way of trying to prepare for what we may learn was getting too far ahead of ourselves.

Throughout this emotional roller coaster, I would stop at the chapel down the street from our house every night on my way home from work. I prayed for a lot during these four weeks, and one of those prayers has most certainly been answered. I prayed for unity with Brian. We would eventually learn that our perspectives were much more aligned than we previously thought. Through grieving the loss of a “normal” pregnancy together, we have been able to lean on each other for support and to communicate effectively through some of life’s most difficult conversations. From then on, Brian stood by me at the chapel each night. I am incredibly grateful for our unity, as it has made the future look so much brighter for our baby boy.

The strength and clarity we were able to find individually and together allowed us to much more constructively process the news we would hear at our 16-week ultrasound.  We both agreed that during weeks 12-16 we felt like we had been equipped with the tools we needed to support each other moving forward.  In the meantime, we were comforted by the fact that Theo was and will continue to be in the safest place possible as I carry him through this pregnancy.

 

 

Meg and I learned we were pregnant around six weeks along, and the six weeks that followed were predominated by feelings of joy, excitement, gratefulness and a sense of ease. I remember walking into our 12-week ultrasound with a level of confidence that bordered on unfounded invulnerability. I felt on top of the world and genuinely, yet naively, believed nothing could go wrong.

Teddy wasn’t exactly cooperative during our first few ultrasounds. When he wasn’t doing flips during his 12-week scan, he was contorting his body in ways that made whatever the sonographer was trying to look at nearly impossible to see. In between bouts of frustration and impatience, we revered his existence. There simply had been no feeling as first-time parents like seeing your child on a small black and white monitor in below average resolution showing crystal clear resemblances of his father’s recalcitrance.

When the sonographer told us that Teddy’s nuchal fold — the area containing fluid behind his neck — measured around seven millimeters thick, and that they typically liked to see this measurement under three millimeters, initially I was confused.  Did that mean something was wrong? That couldn’t possibly be the case . . .  The sonographer was so calm as she reported her findings. Only a few minutes later would Meg tell me as tears ran down her face that she knew something was off when the sonographer’s hand holding the probe started trembling on her belly. Seconds later the sonographer would deliver the results.

The feelings that followed may best be characterized as deep fear and uncertainty. Would we lose our child? What was causing his symptom? We were told that causes could range from a genetic defect, to a virus, to a heart condition, to an innocuous anomaly, and that only time would tell. In a matter of minutes, the foundation upon which our prior optimism had been built was shaken to its core. We didn’t know at the time that we would be tried, strengthened and shaped in a way that would bring us closer together and more resolute in our love and commitment to our precious boy. In the meantime, we prayed, we cried, we fought and we forgave until the picture became clearer.

It was at our 12-week ultrasound when Meg and I learned that our baby boy had an abnormal nuchal translucency screening. Typically seven is a lucky number. In this case, a nuchal fold seven millimeters thick was more than twice the outer limit of a “normal” reading. After four long weeks waiting for our next ultrasound, we would eventually learn that our baby’s abnormally thick nuchal fold was caused by a rare and complex heart condition called single ventricle defect.

A healthy heart has four chambers: a right and left atrium and a right and left ventricle.  Our 16-week ultrasound showed that our baby’s heart had only three of those chambers. He was missing one of the two ventricles he would eventually need to properly pump blood throughout his body. Three quarters of a heart will get the job done in utero because the baby has his mother to provide oxygenated blood for him that he could not otherwise provide for himself. But until about 35 years ago, a baby could not survive more than a few days after birth with only one ventricle. Medical developments have since opened the door for children with this diagnosis to not only survive, but to also live full and relatively healthy lives.

This is the story of our pregnancy with a child diagnosed with single ventricle defect.  We’ve chosen to live our story with hope, optimism and two and three quarters of hearts full of love.

Why a blog and why now?

Meg and I decided to start a blog for a few reasons. First, we wanted to keep our friends and family up-to-date with the course of our pregnancy and the health of our baby boy, and we found this to be the most efficient way for us to do that. Second, we thought sharing our experience could be of some help to others. Hopefully our perspective provides others facing a similar path with reason to be strong and hopeful. Third, we decided to share our story for ourselves. Meg and I have each grieved — separately and together — and have previously found that healing and growing most readily occur through sharing with and supporting others. And fourth, we decided to start sharing our story now because we have made the decision to commit to doing everything we can to bring a healthy and full life to our first child, Theodore Patrick Becker (Theo to his mother, Teddy to his father).

We’re ready for this journey, acknowledging it will at times be difficult, and we hope you take something — large or small — from our story. Feel free to share it as you see fit. To many, it may have only marginal meaning; to others, it may strike a chord that changes a life for the better. We trust that it will find whom it is meant to find.

[Parenthood] is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you would have. It’s about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be. And that, if you’re lucky, he just might be the teacher who turns you into the person you’re supposed to be.

— Joan Ryan