I Just Want to Be Normal(ish)

I want to be able to get pregnant, tested and be reassured that my baby is healthy like most other pregnant women. I am not unique because I have lost a baby. I am not unique because I have lost two babies. But I am unique in that I have lost two boys to Potter's Syndrome (the same diagnosis of bilateral renal agenesis) yet we still don't know why. We don't know if it's genetic, although the possibility seems likely. We don't know if it's a combination of genetics and environmental factors, just environmental factors or if in our case the recurrence is just a fluke like we were told after losing Wyatt. We do know that our boys had completely normal chromosomes and that their bodies were formed perfectly without kidneys.

This also makes me unique because in carrying a subsequent pregnancy I must get pregnant, hear the baby's heartbeat around ten weeks, feel the baby move sometime within the next month or so and watch my stomach grow for almost five months before I can find out whether that baby is healthy, whether he or she has kidneys. There is no blood test, no early ultrasound, no early detection method and no peace of mind for me - for five long months.

I wish I could just be more normal. That I could get pregnant and somehow be able to know sooner that my baby would be healthy. That the sound of my baby's heartbeat could be reassuring and the baby's movements could be comforting. I once had five months of this normalcy, the months before Wyatt's diagnosis. After that everything changed and each subsequent pregnancy was overshadowed by those memories, those words and those ultrasound images we viewed on a cold and snowy January 2004 afternoon. Yet, even in the stress of those three pregnancies which followed (all resulting in healthy little girls), I was able to brush those words to the side most of the time and focus on one word - fluke, fluke, fluke.

But now, well Eli changed everything - again. I've pretty much thrown the word fluke out of my vocabulary. Now the possibility of it happening again is all too real, it can't just be imagined, or ignored. I lived through it just one year ago. For me it can happen again and five months is a long time to go without knowing.