Chloe Aria

Well the Dr was wrong on the sonogram about the gender of our baby, the chromosome test came back and we are actually having a little girl, her name is Chloe Aria. Chloe means 'blooming' and Aria means 'melody', so if you think about it she is our blooming melody.  Honestly I love our child no matter if we were having a Lucas or a Chloe!

On to the news we received today, we saw Dr Bruener, who works in the same office with Blanco, and today we discovered our Chloe's brain did not develop and she only has a brain stem, and the Dr's have no idea how much longer she will live. If she lives till birth, and is born she could be a still born, or if she is alive she will not be able to do anything and be in a permanent vegetative state, and there is a high chance she will not make it past a month of life. They believe she has a condition called 'Hydranencephaly' which is a rare condition that effects about 1 in 200,000 births in the U.S. or there's a possibility she has another rare condition called 'Holoprosencephaly' which effects about 1 in 5,000-10,000 births. Both conditions are very similar, and just with the sonograms they are unable to be 100% sure what is going on.  We are going to be sent to Dallas for a fetal MRI to give us a better diagnosis of what she has within the next couple of weeks. Sadly there is no known cure, or reason why this happens, or what causes it, as the Dr said this is like a 'lighting strike'.  Also our chromosome tests all came back fine, and also the infection test all came back negative, which was a plus of the visit.  The genetic counselor spoke with us as well, and she was very helpful, she told us about a perinatal hospice care that is available, and also gave us some website with support groups of families who have went through this, she also informed us of an organization called ABC Ministry (Angel Baby Creations Ministry in Midkiff and St Lawrence, TX) who takes a recording of the baby's heart beat, puts it into a teddy bear, and monograms the baby's name on the front in a heart.  We decided to go ahead and do the recording and send off for a bear, because I know that there is a chance that we could go to any one of these visits and not be able to hear our Chloe's heart beat again.

It's been a long day, and hearing more bad news hurts, but I believe Chris and I are in a better place to hear it all and take it in this time, because sadly its not that much of a shock for bad news this time around.  We understand that we may be delivering our little Angel much sooner then we thought, and that is tough to comprehend, but we both understand that she will be in heaven watching over us, and her future siblings, and she'll get to meet her PawPaw, her many great grandparent's, and many other relatives that are in heaven as well, which helps.  We won't go back to the Dr's until Dec 6th, which hopefully by then we will have already been to Dallas for the MRI and have the results.