Falling pregnant with our son we were so over the moon, it felt like a dream come true. The first trimester was rough, however it was pretty plain sailing up till 25weeks. Then I had been feeling him move quite a lot and was at work and couldn’t really feel him most of the day. Thinking is this normal, not wanting to be a pain to anyone I went to bed and hoped it would all be fine. By the morning everything was still the same so I went to the hospital for checks.
This is where we were informed that although he was moving, there was too much fluid at the back of his brain. This was during covid so I was there alone being told this information. They couldn’t give me anymore information as we needed to see a specialist. They referred us to another hospital to see the fetal medicine team. However, this information was given to us on a Friday and we didn’t hear anything till the Monday and the appointment was the Tuesday.
With the stress of the appointment we arrived over an hour early! When we were finally called through the team were amazing. They scanned him and said that they can see the same findings. We then went into a family room, where they told us all the options we had. We were offered bloods for me and Myles to check that we were compatible, as I wasn’t aware but some people aren’t compatible and wouldn’t successfully have a healthy baby together. Luckily for us the bloods were all normal. They then offered us an MRI on the baby, which was in another hospital that was a lot further away for us, but at this point I was willing to have anything. We had this done at 28 weeks pregnant and I had to lay on my side by leaning towards my back to allow the cage to go over my bump. This was the most uncomfortable I had ever been and I had to stay there for 1 hour, I had a button to press to have a break but if they didn’t have enough information I would then need to go back into the machine anyway. I managed to hold out for the hour and get the information needed. Finally the last procedure was paracentesis, this was the most risky procedure. This could cause miscarriage and was very scary. However, they were so reassuring and they said the information they would gain would really help. The procedure was very uncomfortable, the needle is HUGE, but they have the scanner on the screen at all times to monitor where baby is to avoid baby from going into the needle. They take around 20mls of amniotic fluid and then send it for testing.
When all the results were back we went back into the family room to have a discussion, I was around 29weeks at the time. They told us they couldn’t really tell from the results that there was anything definitive. However, due to the excess fluid at the back of the brain, there was a high chance that our son would be born with a learning disability but they couldn’t say fully what this could be. After giving us this information they allowed us to talk, they said there could also be nothing wrong and we won’t know until he is born, they offered us a termination which I couldn’t understand as we were already at 29weeks. We both agreed to continue with the pregnancy and wait to see when he was born what the concerns would be.