The Diagnosis

When my wife found out she was pregnant, she was psyched out of her mind. It had always been her dream to become a mother of at least 12 kids (12?! someone please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks she's nuts...) I was thinking more like 0....maybe 1. Anyways, I eventually warmed up to the idea and became pretty excited too.

Still have no idea how they can tell it's a boy...

I had always hoped for a boy. I wanted someone to teach how to play baseball and basketball and someone to share my passion for sports with. When we went in for our 20-week ultrasound check up, sure enough, we were having a boy! I was pretty excited that we were having a boy, but managed to keep my cool. Didn't want my wife to think I was actually excited for a baby...


The ultrasound technician noticed something abnormal in the ultrasound and told us to sit tight while she went to get the OB/GYN. Abnormal? What are you talking about? Our baby's obviously perfect...are you looking at the same screen as us? She came back with the OB/GYN and he told us the news that would put our lives on an emotional roller coaster for the next several months...

"Your baby has OMPHALOCELE." 

What's that? You're just making up words...

"His bowels and organs are just floating around in the womb. They're not inside his body like they should be."

Is this some kind of sick joke you play on all first time parents? Wait, is today April 1st?

How is that possible? How did we mess up? We had been so careful with my wife's diet and health...What does that mean for him? What does that mean for us?  Questions flooded our minds. Words from his mouth just floated around the room. Words we didn't want to hear. Words no new parents ever want to hear.

I'm not sure.
He might be just fine.
I don't know for sure.
He might not be fine....
He might have genetic disorders.
He also has a hole in his heart.
There's no way to tell right now.
He might have brain development issues.
He might be deformed.
He might need surgery.
We can't really see any details.
He's too small to see anything right now
He might not make it....
Death is a possibility.

Here we are. Two invincible young kids ready to have a baby...getting ripped to shreds over four little words. Death is a possibility. 

We went from excitement from having a perfect little boy to the possibility that we might not even have a baby anymore.

The technician was nice enough to offer some comforting parting words on our way out, "Don't google it. Just don't. It'll scare you." Scare us? What? You think we're not already terrified? We never googled it by the way. Ever. If anyone wants to google it for me and let me know if it's really that scary, go for it.

The next 18 weeks of the pregnancy were filled with nightmarish appointments with a bunch of specialists. Most of them just confirmed what the original diagnosis was. But none of them could give us direct answers to how the baby would be affected when he was born or what would happen to him.

Then finally...we got some good news. The cardiologist told us his heart would be fine. The hole was minor. Whew! One issue down, a million to go.

We had several appointments with ultrasound specialists who explained to us that apparently all babies originally have all their bowels and organs floating around for their first 7 or 8 weeks, then the stomach skin closes up around the organs, keeping them inside. After that point, especially after 20 weeks, if the stomach skin closes and the organs don't come inside, you can forget about them ever coming inside before the baby is born. Meaning surgery would be required to put them inside.

That was the case with our baby. But more good news, we met with a pediatric surgeon. He was a bit overconfident in his skills and experience with operating on omphalocele babies. He assured us everything would be just fine. We finally had hope for a brighter future.

Then...about a month and a half before before our baby was due, we had another appointment with another ultrasound specialist. We go in and my wife gets ready for the ultrasound and the extremely impatient specialist gets started and the first thing we see on the screen is this image.

"I got this. Don't worry about it".

Our kid was giving us the thumbs up. Even though it was probably a dumb coincidence, it gave us so much hope after a miserable 4 months of worry and uncertainty. The technician poked around and checked her files and sighed. "Can you tell me why you're here?" We explained to the best of our knowledge what was happening with his bowels and organs floating around. "What? I don't see that." You don't? (Even though we had been through about 1,000 ultrasound appointments, we still couldn't tell what any of the blobs were...) You can't see it? "Nope. Everything's inside." What? Are you sure? (groans) "Yep, look at this...it's all inside. Whoops there's the liver, barely missed that. Yeah the liver is outside. Everything else is inside."

Are you kidding me? Our kid had the nerve to give us the thumbs up as if it was no big deal he somehow sucked in all his bowels and organs (except his liver) inside his body like a human vacuum, even though it was scientifically impossible? 

That's when we realized our kid was a warrior.