Hello World!

Well hello world!
Let me introduce you to my story.

The main part of the story began 4 weeks ago, on Sunday 6th Jan 2013 at 3:45 pm.
Our little baby girl was born at a healthy 9lb and 1/2 an oz and whisked away to special care because she was a slightly alarming shade of dusky pink. Within hours we were told she had an enlarged liver and spleen, a heart murmur, low oxygen levels - oh, and Down's syndrome.

Well, that was a surprise! My first thought was 'ok, the next few years are going to be a lot of hard work!'.  I was slightly stunned but not completely shocked. Let's backtrack a couple of weeks...

Well, a couple of months. Ok, about 8 months...

In April 2012 we moved house. As usual, the alignment of my husband's work contracts and the lease was such that the move happened in a big rush and we only had the new house secured within days of the end of our lease at the old house. It was a crazy time. My husband was commuting to Sydney on a Sunday night and arriving back on Friday night to spend the weekend at home. Needless to say, there was not a lot of time for thought about anything else.

Towards the end of April then the start of May I started to wonder about my cycles....on thinking back I couldn't remember a period at all during April, or the last couple of weeks of March. I did a pregnancy test and, hey, it was positive!

The next few weeks were very interesting. I counted back and thought I must be about 6 weeks at that point. I didn't get a chance to get to the Dr about it, so it wasn't until a couple of weeks later when I'd had bleeding for several days and thought I had miscarried that I fronted up. I was sent straight over for an ultrasound which confirmed I was pregnant (Yay!) and was 6 weeks and 2 days (WTF? You mean I have 2 extra weeks of first trimester to go??? Noooo!).

Anyway, I was told to take it easy since there was still a 50/50 chance of losing it. Easier said than done when you're on your own with a 4yo and a not-quite-2-year-old!

Everything seemed to settle down then. I went back to the Dr for a follow-up and had the discussion about the 13-week scan. I declined, saying I didn't see the point in finding out about genetic defects. The doctor helpfully replied that if it came back positive I'd have the opportunity to.....and I didn't let him finish the sentence. I told him flat out that we wouldn't be taking that opportunity. I still hope that I didn't get the wrong end of the stick. If we missed out on the opportunity to get free chocolate.....

And things went on like this so that I had my 20 week ultrasound the same day as my very late first hospital appointment with the Baby Dr. I had thought I'd find out the sex this time - having 2 girls already found us in possession of looooaads of pink frilly items of clothing which could cause a serious problem on washing day for an unfortunate unexpected boy child. We all went to see the scan, my husband and daughters and I. Normally the radiologist asks whether or not you'd like to find out the sex, but I was so caught up with what my girls were doing in the room that I didn't notice until the very end that she hadn't asked and neither had I. All of a sudden, 'that's all we need to do, it's all normal", and she was gone.

Then the next week my husband started having mysterious seizures.......