Hardest Day Yet

Today was a tough day. We had an appointment scheduled at Stanford (actually the Heart Center at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital) for a fetal echocardiogram. The procedure is done by ultrasound but it has to be done at Stanford because they don't have the fancy machine here in Santa Cruz. The echocardiogram is performed to rule out a heart issue as the cause of the cystic hygroma and the swelling in the body of the baby.

After the ultrasound tech spent what seemed like forever looking at the heart from about 20 different angles, the cardiologist came in and told us that the baby's heart is quite normal. She can't find any problems with the heart. We were relieved to hear this.

I don't remember exactly how she made the transition, but somehow the doctor transitioned the conversation from "your baby has a normal heart" to the subject of "fetal hydrops," which is the medical term for the swelling that has moved into the baby's body cavity. Although Dr. Taslimi had not actually used the term hydrops with us last week, I was suspicious that what he called "swelling" is also known as hydrops. I have read about hydrops but since I wasn't sure that our baby has hydrops, I didn't want to jump to conclusions and cause unnecessary stress for any of us.

So when this doctor mentioned hydrops, and in fact, said that our baby has "profound hydrops," it was overwhelming for us. For Juan this was new information and for me this confirmed my suspicions, but for both of us it was heartbreaking. After mentioning the hydrops, the doctor wanted to make it clear that we understood that babies just don't survive hydrops. It could be caused by many things (infections, anemia, chromosomal abnormalities, etc.), but generally it's not survived.

Our hearts are breaking, and the thoughts and feelings we are experiencing are difficult. All the doctors say, "We could see a miracle," but you can see sadness behind their eyes. I wonder what it must be like to be in their shoes, to have seen people in this situation over and over again, and to have to talk to us when we are going through it for the very first time. We would love to have a miracle baby, but it just seems like the odds are against us at this point. And while we do believe that God could heal our baby, we also know that He doesn't have to.

And even though our hearts our breaking, we still have hope. We know that our hope lies beyond our current circumstances. We still believe that God has allowed us to be on this journey, and we believe that He will take care of us no matter where this road takes us.