An unexpected journey

'1 in 700 babies are born with a cleft', said the screening nurse. 'It's really quite a common defect'.

By March of 2014, I had already had three scans.
The first was a seven week scan to check the viability of my pregnancy. You see, I had already been pregnant and un-pregnant rather quickly back in the November of 2013, so I was delighted to see my little seed's heartbeat pulsing away.
My old anxieties returned around week 9 and I lost any pregnancy symptoms I thought I had. We paid for a private scan just to check and again everything seemed fine.
Still, I panicked and read about missed miscarriages, conditions that they would find at our first 'official' scan, but the time finally came and there was seed lying on her face with her bum in the air (a position she repeats at every other scan we've had). The sonographer measured her and checked for major structural abnormalities. We came away satisfied that everything was on course and set about sharing the good news with our closest friends/family.

We were booked to go away to a friends' wedding abroad the week after our 20 week anomaly scan, so I was glad at the time to be 'getting it out the way' before being able to relax and enjoy the occasion.
We turned up an hour early (not easy with a bursting bladder) before being told they had messed up our appointment. They begrudgingly squeezed us into a 6pm slot and rushed through the necessary checks, but they couldn't see her face or heart valves and her femurs were measuring below the 5th percentile. As usual she was bum up in the air and wouldn't play ball, so the nurse asked us to come back the week after. The wedding was beautiful, but I couldn't let those niggling worries dissipate and although I tried to shut them down, they kept bubbling away.

Cue the anomaly scan part 2 when we arrived home.  'Heart valves are all fine...silence...femurs have dropped below the 3rd percentile...silence...I'm afraid I can see a cleft lip'. At this point hubbie let out a deep guttural sound and I burst into hysterical sobs. I had no idea where either sounds came from, I just know I never want to hear them again. I also remember clutching at the sonographer and not wanting to let go. She held me for a while and then helped me off the table and took us into a counselling room.

The next hour or so passed in a haze. My lasting image was of a plant that needed watering and pale blue walls that seemed to absorb our questions and then silence. I kept thinking of all the tears shed in that tiny room and it made me ache. The screening nurses gave us leaflets/info/cups of tea and the sentence 'It could be more than a cleft, we have to make sure'.

I had another scan that day performed by a senior consultant who confirmed a unilateral cleft lip 'probably on the left side'. She then ran through what else we might be facing because of the other 'soft marker': short femurs. The words 'Edwards syndrome, Downs, Turners'...swam around meaninglessly. I was advised to have amniocentesis the following day, despite my blood tests having showed I had a 1:4600 chance of my baby having one of these syndromes, pretty low by any standards.
The amnio was performed successfully, we watched our little seed recoil from the giant needle being stuck into her amniotic sac. Then began the very long wait until the results, made worse by the fact we had an additional two day wait because of the weekend. We were allowed leave from work and tried to pass the time.
The first set of results came back on the only rainy and stormy day of that week, and during the only hour my husband had left my side. We were lucky...they were clear for Edwards, Downs and Patau. We had to wait an additional two weeks for the remaining results but we were lucky again; they were clear. It may just be the cleft in isolation, she may just be a small baby. We have to have growth scans at 28 and 34 weeks to check.

This was our beginning, a journey we never expected to take, but showed we are stronger than I ever could have imagined. We all like to know we share the same pain sometimes and that we are not alone when we are struggling and I hope that this offers even a little bit of insight or a sense of camaraderie for someone.
We also wanted to start this blog to show our seed how much we love her and we would do anything to keep her safe and happy.