Well it’s still there.
We went to the Fetal Medical Unit to have our scan and they confirmed it is still there.
It was a day of such weird emotion and I don’t really know where to start with it all. We arrived a early so stopped in the café for a drink and as we sat there, I kept seeing pregnant ladies walking past with their maternity notes. I said to Jack it must be quite common for expecting mothers to be asked back for a re scan then because there are so many of them here. I counted 6 in just 10 minutes! This obvious made me feel so relieved, I wasn’t alone and there were other women in similar circumstances.
We got in the lift and headed up to our floor, where I then realised that the Fetal Medical Unit was just a small part of the overall Ultrasound department, hence all the pregnant ladies! Oh shit, I was completely wrong. We went and checked in at the desk then had to go and wait in the normal waiting room. I felt myself getting annoyed at all the other mums with their perfectly normal, healthy babies and found myself judging people I’d never met before. One lady sat opposite us, quite heavily pregnant with a young child with her. She was so engrossed on her phone that she didn’t even notice her child climbing on the table next to her! I felt angry that someone who didn’t even look after the child they had could be having another one that had no issues. It felt so unfair, why me? In hindsight, I’m sure she was a perfectly capable, loving mother and it's completely unfair to judge someone so harshly based on the 5 minutes I spent sat opposite her.
We waited for what felt like a lifetime. In reality it was about 30 minutes then we were called in by an older male doctor. When we got into the room there was also 2 midwives and a visiting doctor. He sat us down and asked if we knew why we were here. I said that we’d had our 20 week scan and they had found a fatty tissue lump on babies head so referred us here.
I then got onto the couch and he started the ultrasound. It felt wonderful to see the baby again and no matter how shit all of this is, it’s still so special to see the baby wriggling around in your tummy. I wish I could have stayed in that little bubble forever. But that didn’t last long and then there was the lump again. That confirmed to both of us that it wasn’t a fluke or a bad scan last time. It is definitely there. The doctor had a good look around the baby then went back to the lump, scanning in and out. At points in the scan it would look like it disappeared, I think this was just when he was going through the tissue or something and seeing my precious little baby without it seemed amazing but then it would come back again and my heart would sink. He then said the words I’ll never be able to unhear, ‘It’s very rare and I’ve never seen anything like this before, I don’t really know what it is’.
That is not what I wanted to hear, not in a million years. He was supposed to say, ‘ah yeah, I know exactly what that is. It's nothing to be concerned about and will go away by itself in a couple of weeks’.
He continued look at it and then checked the blood flow. It has a high blood flow so he called it vascular and took all of the babies measurements and measured the lump again. He then ended the ultrasound and sat me up. Inside I didn’t want to, I wanted to keep looking at my little baby wriggling around. I didn’t want to face the reality of what he was going to say.
The doctor then went on to say again that he wasn’t sure what it could be but thinks it is some kind of tumour. I don't like that word in the slightest, it just makes me think of cancer. He then went on to explain loads of different points that I don’t know how to put in any kind of order so I’m just going to list them:
· As there is a high blood flow, there is a possibility that the tumour could grow. It may grow with the baby or could grow rapidly.
· This could then have an impact on the babies heart as they are only designed to pump bloody around their tiny bodies so when it has to pump so much around a big tumour it can cause heart failure or impact on the babies development and growth.
· There doesn’t seem to be any break in the structure of the skull so he doesn’t think that it is connected to the brain but can’t be sure.
· There is a chance that it either doesn’t grow and stays at the 2cm he measured, or it could go by itself before birth.
· There’s no treatment he can do whilst the baby is still in the womb.
· If the tumour does grow, they may be able to remove it after birth but given the blood flow this may be a risk and could lead to too much blood loss. It would also depend on when the baby is born as to how much the baby may be able to cope with and if it's fit and healthy enough to go through major surgery.
He then broke it down into 3 different scenarios:
1. The tumour stays the same through out the remainder of my pregnancy and baby remains stable and happy until I am full term and I may be able to give birth naturally. Obviously, this is the most favourable option and best outcome.
2. The tumour grows in proportion with the baby and baby remains stable until I am term and needs to be delivered by caesarean because a vaginal birth would put too much pressure on the tumour. This still wouldn’t be great, but we would cope.
3. The tumour grows rapidly, and the baby’s heart cannot cope with this, the baby would then need to be delivered by emergency caesarean at whatever point in my pregnancy.
I didn’t really know what to think or what to say. I’d just started getting my head around a possible caesarean but now combine that with a possibly premature baby as well. Shit, this really was serious and going to be hard.
He then talked through our options and had to mention termination. I’ve always been so anti termination and never thought I would be in the position where I would even consider it and as painful as it is to admit, it did cross through my mind. What if there is connection to the brain in the tumour, could that mean brain damage? What if its cancerous? Surely, I can’t bring a baby into the world who has cancer. What kind of a start in life is that for any baby? What if the baby is so premature, vital parts of it haven’t formed? What if it can’t breathe by itself? Can I really put my baby, myself, my husband, my daughter and my family through all of this? I already have one child, is it fair to do this?
But then I thought, I can’t give up on this baby. What about all of the positives? What if it does go away? What if it doesn’t grow and everything turns out okay? What if they remove it as soon as the baby is born and you’d never even of known it was there in the first place? There might not be a connection to the brain, it might not be cancerous, it may not grow rapidly enough to affect the heart. There were far too many positives to even consider a termination. This is my baby and I’ll damn well do everything I possibly can to make sure we get through this, and we will get through it.
So what happens now? Well we’ve now had an urgent referral for an MRI scan at Bristol Southmead hospital which should be done in the next 7-10 day. This will show if there is any connection to the brain and also if it is cancerous. We could fall at the first hurdle but then we just change the plan and go down a different route. A route I have no idea about at the moment but there is a route there somewhere. Or it could be 2 massive boxes ticked off on our way to being okay.
We are then going back to the Fetal Medical Unit in 2 weeks’ time and the doctor wants to measure the tumour again to see if it has grown. This will be a massive point in the process and will set the way for the rest of the pregnancy.
That evening a friend of mine posted a picture on social media and I've never found something to be so relatable. I was disappointed, angry and so scared but my god I knew for certain that I was never going to give up on this baby no matter what happened.
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