The very beginning...

By the time I found out I was pregnant with my eldest, my son C.J., I was teaching preschool and finishing up my associates in Early childhood education. I knew exactly how my pregnancy was going to go. i was going to do everything right. I wasn't going to make any mistakes with MY baby, I knew it all. I had read everything there was to read, I was buying only educational toys, reading to my belly (to insure a high I.Q.), I was eating extremely healthy etc...
In my 20th week, we had a routine ultrasound done and it revealed we had a two-vessel umbilical cord. Something that happens in only .01% of all singleton pregnancies. We could deal with that. But, we were told our child more then likely had down syndrome. After looking at all the present markers in several ultrasounds we were scheduled an amnio. I chose to do the amnio, because I could spend the next 5 months not knowing.
Being faced with a great chance of having a child with special needs, is humbling. I accepted right away that this was my baby and I loved him NO MATTER WHAT!! however, there is a sort of grieving process you go through. Grieving that you dreams have changed, learning to let go of one idea and to accept another. Accepting for once I didn't know what to do. I knew nothing of raising a Down's baby.
The two week wait for amnio results was devastating, I couldn't have done it if my husband hadn't been right by my side the whole time. Finally, we got the news our baby was fine. All the markers in the ultrasound were then linked to Inter-uterine Growth Restriction.
I was relieved, but once your thinking changes it's hard to reverse it. while I was grateful he was fine, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in over my head. The feeling that maybe i didn't know what to do. How prophetic those thoughts turned out to be.