Growing, Growing, Done

 The creation of life.

Just wanted to shared the progress of how Aria came to be.

Our little bean at 9 weeks

 It's incredible that humans start off this small and tiny. And crazier to think that this was the time her face was forming and when the cleft appeared.

12 weeks

A person appears. Everything was going well at this point. We left our first prenatal scan knowing that our baby had a strong heart beat and the doctor was 70% sure we were having a girl.

19 weeks

This was the scan that changed everything. It's shocking how clearly define the cleft is at this point. We had to speak to a genetics counselor about our options. It felt like dream. We were told that a cleft could be a sign of more abnormalities. More testing had to be done; so an amniocentesis was scheduled. That was a freaky experience. Trying to lie still while a doctor inserted a long needle into my belly while trying to not stab the baby. As we waited for the test results to come back, we had to discuss the possibility of termination. After a couple of weeks the test results came back normal. Besides the cleft we were having a perfectly healthy baby girl. For me, this resulted in another round of frustration of wanting to know what causes a cleft.

30 week

We went back in for a couple more ultrasounds. These were enjoyable as long as we walked out with no more bad news. With my past pregnancy we did not get anymore ultrasounds after the 20 week check up, so to be able to see more images of the baby growing and to continue seeing that strong heart beat was exciting.

34 weeks

The overall pregnancy was as normal as it can be. My health was good. The baby's health was good. I was eager to be done with this pregnancy but I think that stemmed from also having to take care of an active toddler.


 A few days before her due date, Aria decided she was done with the womb too and emerged. The birth went quick and easy. Now we were finally able to see how bad the cleft was. It's not the worst case but definitely more than we would like it to be. 

The diagnosis...

A unilateral cleft lip and palate.

Discovery

I've been so back and forth on the creation of this blog for a long time.  But I've finally decided to write it and to share our story with family, friends, and the world. I'm hoping this blog will be therapeutic for me and informative for others. 

It all started in May of 2013. We went in for our 20 week ultrasound excited to get confirmation on our baby's gender. We did not expect to walk out shocked with different news...our baby has a birth defect. The ultrasound showed a definite cleft in the lip and possible cleft in the palate. I've seen the photos from Operation Smile and knew the term but never thought it would be part of MY life.

A cleft is caused when the face does not completely fuse together at 6 to 8 weeks gestation. Cleft lip and/or palate occurs in about 1 in 700 births worldwide.

We some how hit one crazy lottery. Both our families have no history of birth defects. We are both healthy people. Our first child is amazingly healthy. We did not know where this would have come from. We tried to think back on our lives at the time. Was it stress? An illness? A plane trip? Something I ate? No one knows. There is no definite cause to a cleft.

The following weekend was spent in heavy research mode. We had to know everything about clefts. What causes it? How is it fixed? We read up on the surgery process. Looked at before and after pictures. We familiarized ourselves with the different repair techniques and the different degrees of clefts. We now know a lot more about clefts than we would like. This first year is going to be a tough road with more bumps along the way for the future. It's going to be a long journey...it's going to be an odyssey.