It was a fluke.  Simply bad luck that our baby girl had T18 that was not likely to repeat itself.  Our doctors and genetic counselors gently encouraged us to try again if we still felt our family was incomplete with one child.   Graham and I had many discussions and often changed our minds.  Hope was always the driving factor that finally won out and we plunged forward with cautious optimism.  As with Nolan, conceiving again was fairly quick and we focused on the excitement and joy.  This would be a rainbow baby to help color our world with happiness and give Wyatt a sibling to share his childhood with.  Underlying fear and doubts crept up below the surface but we tried our best to quiet them and focus on hope. 

Our family moved to a new town during the pandemic so in an effort to truly put the past tragedy behind us, we identified a doctor in our new community to shepherd us through this pregnancy.  At our first doctor’s appointment, the doctor did her best to lay out a plan forward that would assume the best and quietly try to discern the worst.  My own experience with a failed DNA blood screen with Nolan meant I insisted on two blood screen tests, each from a different company.  I could tell the staff was kindly humoring me to calm my paranoia.  They made a point of reassuring me at the first ultrasound this baby was developing normally and not showing any of the early telltale signs of trouble.   They also reassured me it was “normal” for me not to feel as connected to this child and I would soon feel only joy and hope as more time passed and we had more medical evidence we would finally bring a healthy baby home.  With that in mind, we shared the news with our families and only a handful of our closest friends. 

On a normal weeknight when Graham was out flying and Wyatt and I were in the midst of our bedtime routine, I got an alert that my prenatal test results were in.   I opened the email expecting to see the run of the mill panel results every pregnant  person gets for a new pregnancy.   Instead, the word T18 was staring in my face again.  Immediately I felt the cold nausea of fear as I tried to make sense of what I was reading.  I skimmed it for the bottom line.  The baby was a boy and it was highly likely he also had T18.  I normally try to filter what Graham and I discuss when he is working since he’s often flying hundreds of people and needs to be as stress free and focused as possible.  In a panic I called him to tell him in disbelief that our worst nightmares were possibly coming true again.   We managed to convince ourselves this could be a fluke –  a baby’s DNA lives in a mother for years after birth so maybe our baby girl was still with me and affecting this.  I tried to focus on hope and concentrated once again on caring for Wyatt.

In the morning, the results of the second blood screen company I insisted on were delivered to my inbox.   Good news, no signs of any elevated risk and our boy seemed healthy.  My heart leapt with joy and then confusion took over.  What was I supposed to believe?  Which result to trust?  I called my doctor and this became immediately out of her depth and we were referred to a maternal fetal specialist to perform more conclusive diagnostic testing.  We managed to wrangle an appointment within a week and walked into office with a grim hope this was just a misunderstanding.

Like with our baby girl, the specialist did a detailed ultrasound to see how our boy was growing.  He asked me details of this pregnancy and continued to assess what he was seeing on the screen.  After some murmurs and sighs he broke the news to us.  His initial assessment was that our boy had the physical markers consistent with the positive blood screen for T18.  It was early so we would have to wait until the pregnancy was at 15 weeks to perform an amniocentesis test to know for sure.  We would also be able to do a detailed anatomy scan to see if the genetic abnormalities he was seeing  continued to become more pronounced. 

Before deciding to try again for a healthy child, I had done extensive research into  options to avoid another collision of timing out of the legal period to seek abortion care in Georgia if we were unlucky a second time.  Thanks to that attitude of “hope for the best but prepare for the worst” I was prepared to advocate for a procedure that could be done earlier in my pregnancy and give us results sooner.  The specialist was surprised I knew about the option to test the placenta and told us he could refer us to a colleague who was qualified.   Once again I endured a painful medical procedure as he tried to be as calm and reassuring as possible.  Once again, we were in state of agonized waiting to see if this wanted child would join our family earthside or not. 

A week into waiting, I called the specialist to hound him for any news.  He patiently reassured me he would reach out as soon as anything was available and even gave me his mobile phone number.  Finally, he called with some encouraging news.  The initial, fast results showed a healthy baby.  No indication the T18 one of the blood screens detected was actually present in the baby.  We could be more hopeful as we waited for the lab to perform the full analysis.  It could take up to two weeks for the lab to count every single chromosome to see if it all added up to a normal child.  If those results matched the fast results, we wouldn’t be out of the woods due to what his colleague detected on the ultrasound but it was at least a reason to keep waiting and seeing how our boy developed.  As he hung up, the doctor casually told me he had never experienced the fast result being different than the full results.

That throwaway line of course sealed our fate.  I tried to fix my attitude for the remainder of the waiting period that we still had hope and I would believe in a miracle.  I would text the doctor every few days and he thanked me for my diligence.  As luck would have it, Graham was home when the doctor finally called us with the results.  Again I was a medical abnormality since the full results showed a positive result for T18 as well as confirmation of a brain defect the first specialist seemed to detect on the ultrasound.  As the full weight of our devastation came crashing down, I asked if he was sure.  He was and our option to receive care in Georgia was for us to go to a women’s clinic.  As a religious man, he did not offer that care to women himself. 

As I adjusted to my new hellish reality I went into autopilot mode of next steps.  I swore I would never return to Colorado again to receive care and once again I was racing a political clock to stay in Georgia.  Since the specialist could not provide us care, I called my new doctor to see if she could.  Her practice did not offer those services.  In a slight panic, I called the OBGYN practice I had seen for my entire adult life before moving to our new town an hour away.  I reached out to my network of moms who had terminated for medical reasons in Georgia to see if they could recommend their providers to us.  Mercifully, my practice in Atlanta called me and agreed to meet with us.  After hearing our story in person and confirming the data and results, they agreed to help us the next week before I reached 16 weeks and the limits of their medical skills would force me to the generic clinic offered to us already.

When the day finally came, it was a blistering hot Friday the 13th.  Since my birthday is also on the 13th day of September, I’d always considered it more good luck than bad.  In the overall scheme of such tragedies, a few spots of luck brightened our second tour through Hell.  My support group of moms rallied around us and ensured we knew we were loved and supported.  I joined a rare circle of mothers who have experienced more than one loss for medical reasons.  No mother should have to make the merciful decision to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons more than once.  We were the few who managed to muster the strength a second time.  The group pooled their resources to gift us with restaurant gift cards so dinner would be the last thing we worried about.  Touching gifts magically showed up at our home to reassure us that our boy was loved and would not be forgotten.  Angels were with us as I worked my way through the fire and sulphurs of Hell. 

Compared to having to fly to Colorado to receive medical care, being able to stay in Georgia at our hospital with my trusted doctor was an indescribable blessing in itself.  This was still an excruciating loss.  But we were met at the hospital, thanks to a favor pulled in, by the administrators of the baby loss program there.  This time I was under full anesthesia and cared for by my personal doctor who reassured me we were doing the right thing and giving our son the love and mercy any parent would give their child.  The only negative difference was that the hospital often just pooled these little lives together at a nondescript cemetery.  If I wanted anything different, it was up to me to make those arrangements to bring our son home.  Never did I think I’d be calling a funeral home for my own child but I have gone through too many “never did I think ” moments in the last three years.

Coming home to my own house and bed.  Being surrounded by our family immediately.  Having the support of family if we needed an errand or a favor.  Those blessings are too valuable and too great to measure.  In these unimaginable tragedies, we often seek the answer of “why”. Many people are able to comfort themselves with “everything happens for a reason, this is God’s plan”. I don’t think there will ever be any answer that is satisfactory to me. The best I can do is live my life as fully and happily as I can. Wyatt deserves a healthy, whole mother.

Immediately after losing Paxton, I was determined to use my voice and his very brief existence to ensure all women can experience there own tragedies with the minimal comfort of staying home with their care providers. I’ve become much more discouraged in this last year as more and more laws are proposed to politicize the healthcare options for these impossible situations. In light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that fervent wish now seems impossible. I pray for all the mothers who will now have untold grief and trauma added to their experiences now that we are not guaranteed protections and a right to healthcare in our home states.