Jeslyn's Story

On January 5th, 2014 I found out I was pregnant with our second child. My husband and I had our first baby appt on February 12^th, 2014 and at that appt, everything looked great during the ultrasound. Our baby had a strong heartbeat and was otherwise doing well. That same day I got my blood drawn for the first trimester screening, as per usual. 

One week later, I got a call from a genetics counselor explaining that there were some things they saw on my blood work that concerned them. In a nutshell, the odds of our baby having trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome) or trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome) increased to a greater than 1 in 5 chance. The counselor presented us with some options (another blood test for screening [NIPT], a CVS, or an amniocentesis) and told us that we could do whatever we wanted to do…just to take some time and let her know how we wanted to proceed. That night, my husband and I discussed those options and we decided to do the non-invasive blood test first and if we needed to do a CVS or amniocentesis following that blood test, we would cross that bridge when we came to it. 

One week later, we went in for what we thought was an ultrasound and blood test…but, things quickly took a turn for the worse. During the ultrasound, the technician found what is called a cystic hygroma. Basically, it is an enlarged pocket of fluid surrounding the baby’s head and neck. It is normally there, but, at our baby's gestation it typically measures between 1-2cm. Our baby's was measuring 2 and a half times that at 5cm. The next thing I knew, the ultrasound technician was walking us to the genetic counselors office to talk about what was seen over the ultrasound. She went over chromosomal abnormalities associated with their findings during the ultrasound (trisomy 18, trisomy 13, Downs, Turners syndrome) and presented us with more options. We asked her to leave the room so that we could discuss things…and we decided to do the CVS that day. We were told we would get definitive results in 7-14 days.

On March 10^th, 2014 we received the results…and, we learned that our baby, a girl, had trisomy 18. Before receiving the results, we talked about different diagnoses and made a few decisions as to what we may do in a given situation. We'd decided that if our child had T18 or T13 that we would terminate the pregnancy. I have recent education in anatomy and physiology and knew all too well prior to all this happening what the outcome/life expectancy for infants with these syndromes is. I don't think this made confirming the decision any easier, as I struggled with it in that moment, the days leading into the termination procedure (D&E) and every single day since that day. Although I was not 100% sure it was what the right decision, we went ahead with the termination and on March 14, 2014, our daughter Jeslyn became an angel baby in heaven.