Thank You #823

Thank you Becky & April for being amazingly wonderful NICU nurses! I love you both. You inspire me beyond belief and keep up the great work! Your gentle spirits and kind hearts are what makes you so incredibly special. I adore you two!

This post  is in honor of my friends who are nurses in the NICU for CHOC hospital in O.C. California! I have had conversations with both of them and they said they didn’t know anyone personally that has gone through what we are going through so I thought i’d give them a little behind the scene tour of our journey before our precious baby get to a nurse like them.

Step 1- Talk about when to try to get pregnant

Step 2- Start taking prenatal vitamins

Step 3- Buy Ovulation Predictors

Step 4- Try to conceive

Step 5- Negative pregnancy test

Step 6-9 repeat steps 3-5

Steps 10-13- repeat steps 3-5

Steps 14-17- repeat steps 3-5 (sometimes this takes years!)

Step 18- *YAY* Positive pregnancy test!!!

Step 19- Hug, cry and talk about the future

Step 20- figure out baby’s birthday

Step 21- Tell Best Friend and Immediate family

Step 22- Tell a few more acquaintances because your too excited to hold it in

Step 23- 1st ultrasound to hear the heartbeat

Step 24- 12 weeks gestation – Announce the Baby to everyone and update FaceBook status along with 1st ultrasound picture  🙂

Step 25- Start thinking of a name

Step 26- 18 weeks gestation – 2nd Ultrasound… Find out gender… Something is not right with the baby. Maybe Down Syndrome.

Step 27- Panic, Tears, Hysteric balling, Forgetting how to breath and lots of begging to God.

Step 28- Long baths, rocking in the fetal position and waiting for next appointment

Step 29 – Another Ultrasound – Not Down Syndrome. even worse… Trisomy 13… Imminent death.

Step 30-42 Weakness, Desperation, Sadness, Panic, Tears and lots more Prayers/begging to God.

Step 43- Can only focus on the Word trisomy. It has become a staple in conversation

Step 44-89 Lots of Research/ Lots of questions and lots more Prayer

Step 90-107 Watching too many Youtube videos that make you breakdown and cry.

Step 108- 129 (20 weeks gestation) Rejoice for every kick & waiting for the next sign of life

Step 130- 144 (21 weeks gestation) Lots of talking to the baby, belly rubs, Jake kissing belly saying “Hi Brother”

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* I don’t know these next steps because we aren’t there yet but I’d image more Desperation, Sadness, Panic, Tears and lots more Prayers/begging to God, but also Hope, Love, increased faith, Compassion, Joy and Peace!

Step #823 – YOU meet our baby for the first time in the NICU. From here on you will be the surrogate mothers. You are our representatives.  🙂   You are the most important person at this point in our baby’s life.

Here is my point… by the time our baby actually makes it to the NICU we have had a world of chaos.

We have had to go through sitting through multiple doctors telling us he won’t make it, there are other options for people in our situation, even IF he made it full term he wouldn’t live long – it’s really tough to hear. I actually have a hard time sitting through an ultrasound without crying because I feel like I am getting to know him better each time I see a foot or something. Then a heartbreaking reality that I may never KNOW this little boy that I am falling in love with is too much to keep in and I cry right in front of the technician and everyone. I don’t care what they think. It’s my personal time with my baby and they just happen to be in the room.

Please know when you are taking care of some of God’s most precious gifts that the parents may have been dreading the day of delivery and yet anticipating it so badly. Us Trisomy mothers know that the moment the baby leaves our womb his chances of dying sky-rocket! We may have only 10 minutes or 10 days (if we are lucky – The average is 2.5 days) We want so badly to meet them and hold them and not let them out of our arms, but even now months away from delivery I am preparing myself to rock my precious boy to death instead of to sleep. I may have to give him back. I have spent time researching and time crying long before you could ever imagine. It will be a long road for us just anticipating that he will make it full term. T13 parents don’t have the luxury of planning a baby shower or even decorating a nursery. Am I bringing an outfit to the hospital to take him home in or to bury him in? We instead have to plan for a casket and a death certificate. I may leave the hospital with a box instead of my baby. The chances are my body will take longer to recover from delivery than he even lived and even weeks after he is gone. The pain will be continual and the reminder of the loss still there. I’m not sure what would be worse – him passing away in my womb and never getting to see him or kiss him or even know the moment he has passed so I could talk him through it or even rub my belly for his comfort OR to actually get the chance to look into his beautiful blue eyes, fall even more in love, sway with him and talk lovingly into his little ears to just have to watch him take his last breath then have to hand his lifeless body over to a mortuary’s assistant. At 18 weeks I was already preparing myself for the worst day of my life. (thus far) … and now all we can do is wait.

Thank you for taking care of the little ones we have grown to love so much. Even if we forget to personally thank you – WE MEAN IT! We love knowing there are wonderful loving people like you who love caring for our baby and who our fighting to keep them healthy. We love you for loving our baby! … THANK YOU! … THANK YOU! … THANK YOU!!!

Another Trisomy video: (Warning: don’t watch if you are sensitive to crying) It makes me cry  EVERY TIME!

Josh and I are actually praying for a non-Christian medical staff so that we can be the light that we always pray to get an opportunity to be. I’m going to marvel in the way God works in their life through Jaxton! We are planning for him to have a full recovery and come home with us and Jake to be the best big brother ever!

823= Thinking of You

Much love from the Husmann Family