The Heart of the Matter

I remember sitting on a therapists couch several years ago and being told that when I speak I need to get to the main idea quicker. Too much of what I say has meaning, like every single word. Most people have a hard time processing that much information. My homework? Get to the heart of the matter. This is something I've been working on, but as you know...I'm wordy.

With Asher there has been so much information thrown at us, so much to update and tell. It has been hard getting down to the main idea. I'm not even sure what it would be. Describe Asher's issues in three sentences? That would take me longer to write than a paper. Seriously. I'm not sure which facts are more important than others, what is something to leave out, gloss over, not mention at all.

With our new baby, it has been more of the same. I haven't been sure what people would care to know, need to know, so I haven't really shared anything. But it might be time. And forgive me if I leave out information because I am going to try to keep to key facts.

So for the first time even, let me share that this pregnancy started out as a twin pregnancy. I'm sorry I know I haven't really shared that. Early on one of the babies stopped developing and instead of vanishing or being reabsorbed, the "debris" hung around and became almost like tumors hanging around in the viable baby's sac. Pregnancies like this one have less than a 50% chance of making it passed the first trimester. But we did. The "debris" is slowly being reabsorbed over time, but there is a chance that when baby girl is born, she may have some extra baggage. Nothing that we can see so far on ultrasound though.

We shared when we found out the gender that we are having a little girl! What we didn't share is that we had to go back three times for our anatomy scan. At first we were told that they just couldn't see her face, that she was being stubborn and we couldn't get her in the correct position. The next week we were told that they saw something. Key fact: Our baby has a heart defect.

There are a lot more details and things that feel so important, but I'll leave it at that. We've had worry of course, but we've learned with Asher to remain calm and balanced and roll with things. After all there isn't much we can do. We've got this no matter what. We'll do what we have to.

Yesterday I met with specialists, had a follow up ultrasound and fetal echocardiogram. And while the news isn't perfect, it is still good. They can still see the heart defect, but somehow in the three weeks since they last looked....50% improvement! Not perfect, because perfect would mean no heart surgery ever, but still good news. Baby girl will not need surgery the day she is born, like we'd been told might happen. She may even be able to avoid it in the first year. And that would be even better news.

So why share now since things are good? I didn't want to share our doom and gloom...we don't want to be that family. Of course people will want to know after the baby is born why she is fragile, prone to illness, why we say "Please use some of our hand sanitizer if you want to hold the baby" lol. I don't want to explain myself later. But mostly I wanted to tell everyone that I finally figured out the heart of the matter, I had some help while hashing it out and getting feedback, but the heart of all of our matters, every trial and tribulation, every problem that we choose not to get us and meet head on, the heart of all those matters is that our life while not perfect, is still pretty good. Just like Lola's heart.

Oh and baby girl has a name: Lola Aisling. That is your reward for reading a non sappy, to the point, nothing too interesting post.