After 8 months and one week of pregnancy, our baby was still only one pound six ounces, so our doctor sent us to a specialist in Denver. First they suspected a problem with the umbilical cord, but they ruled that out. They found that the baby's heart was twice as big as it should be, nearly filling its chest. They immediately gave me amniocentesis... (it doesn't hurt as bad as they say it does) The baby also had a lot of fluid on the brain, and a fetal echo showed us that it had a hole in its heart. Blood would pump strongly into the heart, but sort of leak out, and mostly just stay in the heart. We were reassured when the cardiologist said that it is sort of routine to perform open-heart surgery on newborns.... not a daily thing, but it is researched, and performed regularly.
Over Memorial Day weekend we waited for the test results to come back. The Doctor had put a rush even over the holiday. She told us her thoughts about what was wrong with our child. Three main factors, the baby's weight, the hole in the heart and the fluid in the brain, lead to one of three things. We had a 20% chance that it was Down syndrome; unfortunately the chances were higher, 80%, for Trisomy 13 or Trisomy 18. Both chromosome defects, like Down syndrome, where either the 13th or the 18th chromosome, instead on two (one from Bryan and one from me) there are three on each gene. The 80% chances are both fatal. Very few children make it because this defect happens at conception, and make every cell in the body sick. The physiological cause of death is that all of the organs cannot survive, and die off semi painlessly.
We would not know until the results came in, which our fate would be. I had been admitted to Saint Lukes/Presbeterian hospital Thursday, the same day as going to the specialist in Denver. We found out this news Friday afternoon, and we still had the entire weekend to wait. My mom stayed at the hospital nearly the whole time, and Bryan stayed with me the entire stay. We kept a positive attitude. The baby was very active, and had a strong heart beat and that gave us hope.
Monday about noon, the doctor came in to talk to us. She had been paged with the results to our baby's problem. The test assured that we were having a boy!!!!
That was exciting because we had both decided that we wanted a boy so our other children would have someone to watch out for them... a big brother. She also assured us that the chromosomal defect was Trisomy 18. Our baby was not going to make it.
The doctor suggested inducing labor. The baby was surviving only because I was able to nourish him. She explained that sometimes the babies die during the stress of delivery, and some of them live for hours. It would have not been worse to continue the pregnancy, but it would have been toxic to my body, and so Bryan and I decided that it was nothing that we could change, so we did not want to risk my body either.
They induced labor about 6pm, Monday night. I was in easy labor all night, and in the morning, they gave me an IV to speed up my contractions. A couple of hours later I had an epidural. We decided that it was challenging enough emotionally, so I did not need to deal with physical pain. About 3:55 Tuesday afternoon, I was fully dilated, and I told the doctors that it was time. After one push, I had Brennen Kurt. He had a heart beat and I got to hold him immediately. Bryan got to cut the cord. He was born at 3:58 pm, and he died about 4:05 that same day. He was in no pain. My mom baptized him, (my priest assured that in this situation, he was already blessed by God himself) and so our son resurrected into heaven that afternoon. The weather was very symbolic that day.
Brennen Kurt "Flutterbug" Chambers-Dunbar was born May 29, 2001. One pound, ten ounces at birth, he was twelve and a half inches. We celebrated graveside services Saturday morning, the second of June. The services were perfect, just like our son.
The hardest part now is coping. It is hard, but we are getting through it. It helps to know that it is not something that is positively genetic, and we only carry a 1% chance of it happening with future children. Our chance for this were 1 in 1.2 million. Brennen would have had a very tough life. We would have provided the best life for him, but physically, and mentally he would have had problems his entire life, starting with open-heart surgery.
He is our guardian angel now, and he is very special to us.
Brennen's body lies at rest in BabyLand at Sunset Memorial Gardens, in Greeley.
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