I don’t even know where to begin.

We came in this morning for the ultrasound checkup.  The doctor wanted to check on his growth and the fluid…so they did.  His head grew, his limbs grew, but his abdomen did not.  It hasn’t grown at all in two weeks.  And so the word I didn’t want to hear came out of his mouth:  induction.

We were allowed to go back to the house and pack our things, then turn around and come back.  So we did.  As scared as we were, we felt hopeful.

Once we got to the SDU, the nurses went over everything.  Plans for the evening were to get comfortable and prepare for the Cervidil, which would “ripen the cervix.”  It would possibly send me into labor, but if not, we would start the Pitocin in the morning.

Just before starting the IV and then inserting the Cervidil, another doctor came in and told them to hold off.  That some results had just come in and we needed to talk about them.  I pretty much knew how things were going to go from there, but it didn’t make the conversation that followed any easier.

There’s a major problem with his chromosomes.  I don’t know how to explain the issue, mainly because my brain has completely shut down at this point, but it’s not good for Benjamin.  It may even disqualify him from the surgery to fix his hernia.  And even if he IS able to get the surgery, there are other problems that will occur that are equally as serious and complicated.  All I can explain about the abnormality is that part of chromosome 4 was missing, and there was an extra part to chromosome 7 that slipped in its place.

His new prognosis for life has yet to be determined, but it’s going to be devastating.  And even if he lives, the quality of his life will be terrible, for lack of a better word.

The Cervidil has been canceled for the night so that we can use the evening to process this information as much as possible, although there is no way to prepare for what’s going to happen.

There will be no miracle.  There is no more hope.  This has been building since the moment he was conceived, we just didn’t know it.  There is no way to fix it and there never was.  There is no way to make it better for him.

All I could do was think about all of the major events of this pregnancy.  Finding out we were expecting, seeing his tiny heart beating so fast and strong, making it to the second trimester, finding out that we were going to have a boy, starting to put his nursery together…and then finding out about the CDH.  And everything went downhill from there.  How could something so beautiful go so wrong in the blink of an eye?

I never thought that I’d find myself saying…I wish it was just a congenital diaphragmatic hernia.  But here I am, wishing it was just that.

I would be lying if I said we were okay.  We are not.  We don’t know where to go from here, how to get ready for everything to become reality.

They are about to give me something that is supposed to help me sleep.  I doubt it’s going to work but…it’s worth a shot.  Tomorrow is going to be a bigger day that we thought.

Please go and hug your children…right now.

Goodnight.