Yay! It Worked!

Okay, I'm pretty happy so far with how user-friendly and easy blogger.com is for posting content.  I have done blogs before in the past but never on a regular basis.  I kept one when I spent a semester of college in Australia, again when Myke and I did our RTW trip in 2006/07 and then once again when I was pregnant with our first child, Chloë.  The third one was a great way for me to keep family and friends up-to-date on how things were going with the pregnancy - especially after we found out that our unborn baby had some potentially serious and life-threatening kidney disease and we were told that she had a very high change of having a rough life of dialysis and probably a kidney transplant by adolescence, IF she made it past the first couple weeks of life.  GROSS.  I don't even like to think about how horrible those last months of pregnancy were for us.  **As an update, Chloë is a happy and healthy little girl who will be turning 2 at the end of next month.  Her kidneys looked fine and beautiful at birth and they continue to do so- she stills sees the pediatric nephrologist (kidney specialist) in regular increments to make sure all is well and everything looks within the normal range.  So far, so good...and I expect things to continue like so.

I honestly just think we can see and know WAY too much with the advanced ultrasounds available today.  Since Chloë's birth, I have had 2 completely random strangers find my blog via a Google search and contact me telling me that they were currently going through the exact same scenario.  I kept in touch with both women through their pregnancies, attempting to send them hope, but not wanting to send a false hope at the same time.  The first woman had her baby a year after Chloë was born and she is perfectly fine.  No signs of kidney issues in post-natal ultrasounds.  The second woman JUST had her baby about 2 weeks ago and her baby is perfectly fine as well!  Both women had babies who showed up with enlarged, echogenic kidneys during a routine ultrasound and were given the heartbreaking news that their baby probably has ARPKD.  The 2nd woman's doctors found it before she was at 24 weeks gestation and they even suggested she consider terminating the pregnancy.  She did not do that and instead her husband and her forked out big bucks to have prenatal genetic testing done so they could know for sure if they were dealing with ARPKD or not.  They did not want to sit for months of not-knowing and waiting for their precious daughter to be born to find out if she was going to be okay.  The tests all came back negative!!  Great news!  They were able to relax and enjoy the remainder of their pregnancy and let the doctors be baffled over what they were seeing.  MOVING ON....  I just wonder how often this same scenario happens...