“Hey, the reason I asked you that question earlier,” he said with slow, cautious words, as if dipping his toe in to test the deeper waters of his heart. Then, he pushed me in with him. “…it’s because I want you to adopt me.”
Sitting on a gym floor four hours from my home, I nearly choked on the pizza I was eating. The question this nine-year old boy was referring to? If I was at the picnic to adopt a child.
It was about a year ago, now, when we first learned that there was possibly something wrong in my pregnancy. On that sunny Friday morning in April, I traveled to Dallas alone for my 12-week pregnancy checkup. Trey stayed home with Kate, and I was looking forward to eating at Chuy’s by myself after the appointment. It was to be a routine checkup, but it became very un-routine when when my obstetrician couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat. We walked down two rooms down to have a sonogram performed, and once the sono tech placed the wand on my gel-covered abdomen, I was quickly relieved to see and hear a strong heartbeat on the screen. Only moments later, though, I found myself swimming in confusion as both my doctor and the song tech discussed with me a thickened nuchal translucency on the baby’s neck, genetic testing, and a possible chromosome abnormality.
I left that appointment troubled, but still hopeful. Surely nothing is wrong, I thought.This type of thing doesn’t happen to me! On the Friday afternoon before Mother’s Day, though, when I was just 14-weeks pregnant, my obstetrician called to inform us that our unborn baby (a girl!) had screened positive for trisomy 21. This meant that we could assume with very strong statistical accuracy that our baby had Down syndrome.
