It was a chance we did not know the outcome of, however we felt that God has given us this once in a lifetime opportunity in this point in our lives for a reason. I found out in Gulfport , Ms where Derek is stationed. I then finally got the courage up to tell my family as they had always encouraged me to adopt , because of the chances of passing 22q11 DS and TOF. I had a cardiology appointment in October of 2013 and knew right then and there Dr. Book would decide my fate of going on with this pregnancy or if we would have to terminate due to my valve pressures not being the best at the moment.
At this appointment I sat down with Dr. Book my cardiologist, and promised her IF at any given point if i got into trouble I would agree to terminate or we would take the baby early if able too. I also had agreed to a fetal echo and amnio as well. A lot of people may look down on me for this decision but in our best interest we also agreed to terminate if the baby had 22q11 , because of my husband being military and myself having 22q11 plus a complicated case of Tetralogy of fallot, we were unsure if i would be able to care for a child 6 hours away from home that had 22q11ds. I then was told by Dr. book that this was going to be a roller coaster and would not be an easy ride and I would have to come see her monthly and move back to ATL.
So, I picked up for the next 7 months and moved back home to ATL , GA where i am originally from and my husband had to stay behind due to being active duty military.
month after month it was appointment after appointment. I went for a fetal echo and to many answered prayers it came back negative that she did not have Tetralogy of fallot. I then sat and waited for the amnio to come back with the fish test and to our surprise it came back negative she did not have 22q11 DS. Many will ask me why or how this is even possible since I am a carrier of both. All I can say is that the odds played in my favor and that our little girl is a blessing.
at around 33 weeks i started to finally hit the roller coaster. Due to being on lasix's i began to have fluid issues and keeping fluid around the baby. my once a month appointments turned into weekly to monitor fluids. At my 35th week appointment my blood pressure was extremely high and fluids were back down again and I was admitted on March 5. On March 6th Our little blessing Myranda Grace Brown came into this world VIA c section at 2:15pm weighing at 4 lbs 10 ozs extremely healthy just tiny!
While Myranda was healthy and perfect, I on the other hand was struggling with fluids. I ended up staying in the hospital for 5 days due to having to drain fluids off so that it wouldn't add anymore stress and pressure on my heart.
People always ask me if i would do this all over again.. honestly I can say NO. Why? because it was a lot of strain not only b wing away from my husband , but having to worry about going into heart failure or all the other possibilities that could have happened that didn't. Another reason why I won't do this again is that I may not be so lucky the next go around because of all the strain the pregnancy did put on my heart, i may not survive and also may not have a healthy child the second round. I did it right the first time and certainly had God's blessing and hand on me for 8 months he never left me and answered every prayer I had. SO now with great pleasure I want to introduce to you our miracle Myranda Grace Brown .
