McKenzie anxiously anticipated the birth of her second child. She hoped this child could serve as a buddy for her first child, Trevor, who has Down syndrome. Unfortunately, she found out that Maely had several abnormalities and would die before, during or after birth. Her story is touching as she explained her decision to carry Maely to term. Carrying to Term Despite Fatal Diagnosis Everything seemed to be okay When their first child was born with Down syndrome they were shocked! McKenzie was young and didn’t feel the need to do any prenatal testing. In hopes of helping Trevor with his development, McKenzie and her husband wanted to have another child to help motivate him. During this pregnancy, they decided to do cell-free DNA testing to be more prepared. McKenzie said, “..everything came back okay, showing no genetic issues, no Down syndrome, no Turner syndrome, or any of those other things, so we were feeling great.” 20-week ultrasound shatters parents world At the 20-week ultrasound McKenzie recalls the sonographer having a hard time with the images. There wasn’t a lot of amniotic fluid and Maely was measuring small. Convinced they had the due date wrong, they told her to come back in a few weeks to allow the baby to grow. They weren’t worried at all, they had the great results of the cell-free DNA test. Their doctor called them the next day and said, “I’m not too stressed, but I want you to go to a specialist at maternal fetal medicine, just to make sure everything really is okay. They look at babies all day and have a little bit more training than our technicians do.” The ‘quick’ appointment turned into a horrible 2 hour experience. Not thinking anything was wrong, McKenzie went to that appointment alone. The sonographers found several birth defects. “At the time I didn’t understand a lot of what they were saying to me. I didn’t understand the vocabulary, but there were about 10 things on the list that were problems and three of them were fatal.” McKenzie said Three fatal abnormalities McKenzie explained some of the issues that they found during her ultrasound at maternal fetal medicine. She said, “She had diaphragmatic hernia, so her diaphragm didn’t form all of the way, and it left a space..for her liver to kind of float up into her chest cavity. Her liver was pushing her heart over, so her heart was out of place. She only had one kidney, she also had a cystic hygroma on the back of her head and neck area.” She continued, “All of those things by themselves are not good news, and all together they were really, really horrible news.” The doctors first thought it was caused by a genetic issue, however, McKenzie had a cell-free DNA test that revealed no genetic issues. This stumped the doctors and led them to pursue further testing. All of the prenatal tests come back normal McKenzie was asked to have an amniocentesis done to get a more in-depth look at what was going on with Maely. To their frustration, the results showed no chromosomal issues. “..having a name to the diagnosis would have helped so much. We were just left with all of these abnormalities that they told us would either cause Maely to be stillborn or die very shortly after birth.” McKenzie said. That is when the doctors presented the idea of abortion. They said there was no viability for life and didn’t think it was a good idea for McKenzie emotionally or physically to carry her. Despite that, McKenzie said, “I wanted to carry her for as long as possible..I am so glad I stuck with her as long as I could.” Fatal diagnosis puts things into perspective When McKenzie first learned that Trevor, her son could have Down syndrome, she was crushed. She said she was talking to her mom on the phone and said, “I’m glad his heart is okay, and worst-case scenario, he’ll have Down syndrome.
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