Amnio Results

We got Clara's amnio results in yesterday and she was perfect. Nothing was wrong with her, no down syndrome, no Trisomy 18, and no Trisomy 13. All of her chromosomes were just perfect and she should have been healthy. It was a very weird feeling to know that your baby should have been fine, but she is not. The tech from the perinatologist's office that called sounded very happy to report that our little girl was just perfect! Too bad she's dead.

Ken and I of course didn't want something wrong with her, but it would make us feel just a tiny bit better knowing that if she did have a chromosome issue, at least she didn't spend her life suffering. It just reopened any amount of healing we had done and made it that much more senseless.

My Dr. called today and was so very sweet. She again said that she was so very sorry and asked how we were holding up. She said that Clara's chromosomes were all normal and that she too was hoping that something would show up in the amnio to explain why Clara had died. About 1/2 of stillbirths are caused by unknown origins. That's a whole lot! My Dr. said that with the cord so tight around her neck, that could have definitely caused her death, but she's not positive. Something happened, we just don't know what. Nothing so far explains why she was so small, she could have also had a placental issue along with her cord issues. We also got the pathology report back from the placenta and they didn't find anything there which is what my Dr. said usually happens. But we did find out that she really did have a 3 vessel cord so the mystery as to why she was so small is bigger. So, we have a part of an answer why our healthy baby died. Her stupid cord completely ripped her off. My Dr. had gone over Clara's ultrasounds again, and said they did see the heartrate decels from our bad ultrasound and the low fluid, so something was definitely up with Clara. My Dr. also believes that something was going on with her, we just will never know what. We just made the best decision based on the facts we had that she would be better off in me, but with close supervision. It just didn't end up ok.

I asked my Dr. if Ken and I should worry about having more children, and she said that as horrible as it sounds, and she didn't have a medical term for it, but we've just had really crappy luck our last two pregnancies and our odds are good at having a healthy baby. Just as good as before. She said that with a 3rd trimester loss like ours with Clara, any future pregnancies would be watched very carefully for anything that might go wrong starting at 6 weeks with ultrasounds. Of course this doesn't guarantee us a healthy baby at the end, but hopefully that would be the case! We don't know what we want at this time. We are terrified at the thought of losing another baby. I have my follow-up appointment next week with my Dr. so we can ask any additional questions we may have at that point, but for now, we are just focusing on recovering, healing, and moving forward.