Our Dandy Walker diagnosis: Part 1 (The 20-week ultrasound)

When people started asking Jon and I if we were going to have another baby when Cohen was around two years old, we always said we probably weren't. I know it sounds weird, but I always had a feeling I would have problems in a second pregnancy. Jon and I had always talked about adopting, and we were just starting to look into the adoption process more seriously when I found out I was pregnant. 

(a coworker brought the eggs from her chickens the week of our diagnosis, which made me sob so hard in the arms of this woman who I hardly knew)

(this picture was taken after the diagnosis. I have very few bump pictures from this time)

On Tuesday May 09, 2017, we had our 20-week ultrasound with the specialist. This is usually the fun appointment in a pregnancy, where you get to see the feet and lips, and this time we scheduled off so Jon could come with me. I had seen her at the 12 week ultrasound also since I had a placental abruption during my delivery with Cohen. So she was checking all the anatomy and everything was looking cute, and we were making small talk. Then she came to the brain. She was looking at it for a really long time, which didn't alarm me at all really, but I did notice she was getting really quiet. So after a while she said she was just looking at a few things and would discuss after she was all done. I started to feel a little scared. 

After she was done she sat me up and told us that the baby had some kind of a cyst on the cerebellum. She said that it could be a Blake's pouch cyst, which is no big deal, or it could be Dandy Walker, which is more serious. She said she would have to look at the images with another FMM, and that she would call us soon to think about an amnio. She wrote it all down on a clipboard, but I forgot to take it, and we were scared, but felt really positive. We felt like it was probably a Blake's pouch cyst. We left that appointment super scared, but positive. We had never heard of Dandy Walker, but the specialist didn't really get into what it was, except that it was serious. 

She called me at work later that day to book me for an amnio the very next morning. She was surprised I was back at work, which seemed weird to me. I think that in her mind she had just given us a terrible diagnosis, but to us, the cyst was probably the "no big deal" thing, the Blake's pouch cyst.The fact that she was making things happen so fast was kind of scary to me, but we were still feeling positive. Jon and I talked a little that night about how we could handle whatever happens, and that if we ended up with a special needs child, we would hire permanent full-time help, and we would just make it work. But we were sure it was nothing much anyway. I didn't look up or google a single thing that night. The next morning, Mom took me to my amnio appt...