Today I've decided to start composing a post I never thought I'd write. One about my beautiful little girl, and our 'journey'! I'm not sure I'll even post when I get to the end, but we'll see.
We found out we were pregnant with Miss Iz in Sept 2012. We'd lost a baby during pregnancy back in April, so she was a much longed for addition to our lil family.
I was monitored senseless after a premature birth with Mstr J, and losing my next. I was on all sorts of medication & pessaries. Not a fun start to a pregnancy, but a necessary one for me. & if it was gona help me get my precious baby, I would do anything.
Other than the crazyness of medication & monitoring, everything was going pretty smoothly. That was until my 20 week scan. I told the scanner how we hoped for a girl to go with Mstr J. She did her job, then went to the computer. I remember thinking, 'well, tell me then'. She came & sat down next to me & told me I was getting my little girl, I was happy, but in a millisecond I could feel that instinct of a 'but' coming my way. She then told me from what she could see my baby girl was going to have a cleft lip & palate. I sobbed!!! I was devastated. Not knowing what this meant for my baby I left in pieces. She booked me for an emergency scan at the hospital the next day.
I did what most of us would, & went home & googled it! Bad move! I spent the night varying from "she's fine, we can do this", to the opposite of reading things about how she would have various other problems, deformities, mental issues & be a very sick baby! I was scared to say the least. & the good old 'why me!' Came out a number of times. We'd been through hell to get Mstr J, nearly lost him a number of times. Lost our next baby, & now this!! Did I really deserve more!!! I cried myself to sleep that night.
I took the next day off work so I could go to my appointment & get my head round things a bit. I laid on that scanning bed almost in tears the whole time. The scanning specialist told me how she would do a more detailed scan of her heart & brain as cleft babies often have more problems in these areas. It felt like it lasted hours & I watched every inch of movement on her face trying to gauge what she was thinking. Listening to every measurement she told the other lady, not knowing what the hell they meant, but wondering if each was a good or bad one. Then she turned to me and said "I would like to offer you an amnio to see if there is anything else wrong with your baby, you may want to terminate the pregnancy". "WHAT" terminate?? Why? Why?? I sobbed. Then I asked her if she had seen anything while scanning that gave her concern. She said no. So I told her that there was no way I was risking losing my baby if she couldn't see anything. And I certainly wasn't going to terminate because of her cleft!!
Over the coming weeks & many more scans, they still couldn't see anything of concern to them, but told me it didn't mean there wasn't going to be anything else. They measured the size of her cleft lip & palate & thought it would be quite large/wide.
I spent the weeks with my head all over the place. I'd go from crying days, worrying about my 'poor' baby girl. To days where I thought 'it's only a cleft, that can be fixed & she's fine inside'. I hated people calling it a 'deformity' and I still hate that word now. I asked myself all the questions under the sun. What will family think? Will people blame me? Will people think she's ugly? I'm gutted I can't breastfeed? How will I cope with comments from strangers? How will I deal with surgery? What if something goes wrong at surgery? What if she has something else wrong with her? How will I cope with feeding her? And even how would I feel? Would I find it horrible? etc? And many many more!!
I met my local cleft nurse who explained how everything would work once she was born. She provided me with a special bottle to feed her with. And she showed me pics of before & after surgery. That really helped me understand what I was dealing with. Images on google had scared me. But now, it felt real, and I could see the difference an operation could make.
Cleft lips and palates
I was still monitored for premature labour two weekly.
Through CLAPA, the cleft lip and palate charity, I was able to arrange a 4d scan for free. This was meant to help us see what our babies face would like & help us prepare ourselves a little more for birth. I don't think anything, pictures of other babies etc can ever truely prepare you, but it would definitely help a bit. Unfortunately Miss Iz was not playing ball & decided she liked to look at my back. We couldn't really see much of her cleft. It was nice to take Mstr J & show him that there was a baby in mummies tummy & that on the big screen was her. He loved telling everyone after how the special camera let him see inside mummies tummy to see his baby sister!!
Miss Iz in 4d, you can just see her lip among her hiding!!
I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed my pregnancy. I spent it either worrying I would go into premature labour again, or worrying about various implications of her cleft, or what else could be wrong.
At 34 weeks I went into labour early again! Although not as early as Mstr J! I went into triage with pains & they wanted to send me home saying they were braxton hicks!! I was in agony! I asked if I could have these pains the rest of my pregnancy as they were really bad & I wasn't sure how I'd cope. Disgruntled, the nurse said she'd get a doctor to come check me. When the doc checked, my waters broke & I was 5cm dilated already!! Panick stations kicked in. Miss Iz was breech, so I had about 20 doctors around me within seconds. Arranging my emergency section. I was scared. I wasn't ready, I hadn't prepared myself for my baby. Just minutes before they were sending me home with braxton hicks! What happened!! Lying on the bed, I was freaking out, I couldn't mentally cope with the numbness. It all flew by in at rush, and at 7.14am Miss Iz arrived. There was a scary moment of silence in the theatre as they had to help her get her breathing going, then we heard her cry.
They brought her over and put her in my husbands arms. My god she was beautiful! I had never seen anything like it! My gorgeous baby girl looked just perfect to me! I felt relieved, the fear of how I would feel when I saw her face disappeared in an instance! And to top it off, her palate was submucous, so no need to go to nicu, she could come with mummy to the ward & be tried on bottles. As long as she coped, she could stay with mummy.
We stayed a few days while she sorted her body temperature out, but all was good.
We went back a few days later & stayed a couple of nights due to jaundice.
My baby girl a few days after we got home looking rather yellow!
I think I'll conquer the from birth story in another post as this has become quite an essay. And Miss Iz has had quite a long rough road! Miss Iz part 2 coming soon!
I guess my main thought in writing this was for people to understand. Many people I'm sure have not even heard of cleft lip and palate before. And for people who are in similar positions maybe to not feel alone. You will go through a rainbow of emotions when you find out there is/might be something wrong with your baby. But you know what, it's ok! We all have those feelings and moments. It doesn't make you a bad person for thinking of negatives. I think it's our way of preparing ourselves.
I wouldn't change my little girl for the world! She's perfect in every way! And whatever her journey may bring, the stuff we know is to come, & the stuff we don't, were in it together! My lil family! XxxX
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