The Miracle of Alex

I really meant to write this yesterday – on Alex’s birthday. It was a busy day, though, and I just didn’t have the time (or energy!) to sit down and gather my thoughts.

Many people know “the story” behind how Alex came to be – and what a miracle he truly is. Many people still haven’t heard “the story,” though, so now is my chance to tell it!

Rob and I had been married a little over a year when we bought our house. We set ourselves to fixing it up, since it was a foreclosure and needed a lot of work, even though it was only three years old. I spent my days and nights painting and painting until sheer exhaustion simply took all the wind out of me. And I was feeling pretty doggone sick all the time, too. That’s about the time we found out I was pregnant. We were thrilled! We had been hoping for that to happen for many months, since we were “older” newlyweds, and didn’t see the need to prolong starting a family. I made my appointment with my new OB, who only took new patients if they were pregnant, and excitedly went in to hear the confirmation. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any good news at my appointment. It seemed the bloodwork indicated a problem . . . the pregnancy numbers weren’t high enough . . . not good news . . . all the doctor's words swirled around me until the unthinkable “M” word jolted me back into reality. I should be prepared for a miscarriage, I was told . . . It just wasn't meant to be, they said. A couple of weeks went by with more bloodwork to confirm the event, and finally it happened. I chose not to have medical intervention and let nature take its course. It did. And that made the second angel I had contributed to heaven . .

My wonderful OB was so very understanding, and explained that we don’t always know why miscarriages happen, and that it wasn’t anything I had done or not done, etc, etc. He did say that there were things we could “rule out” if I was willing to do some more bloodwork. I was all for any explanation, so we did the bloodwork. We found that I have a rare blood-clotting disorder that can contribute to miscarriages. Word like "lupus anticoagulant," "anticardiolipin antibody syndrome." and "antiphospholipid syndrome" didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I quickly found out that knowing I had at least one of them was a good piece of information to know. The clotting disorder predisposes me to strokes, thrombosis, blood clots, etc!! The OB said I would start by taking aspirin daily and when/if I got pregnant again, I would take daily shots of a blood thinner (Lovenox) to (hopefully) prevent another miscarriage. (Sounded like a barrel of fun, but - whatever it took!) Usually women with this disorder didn't find out until they had multiple late term losses -- and I had found out after two early miscarriages. I certainly considered this new information a blessing.

A few weeks went by and I busied myself with a new school year’s beginning. This time, I attributed my fatigue to the new schedule – not getting to sleep as late as I had done all summer break – and burning the midnight oil trying to get myself ready for new students and a new year. Several days into August, and I realized that just I wasn’t feeling very good. Again, I figured I was just going to have to get used to being busy again.

Until it hit me: this was exactly the way I felt just a few weeks before, when I was-----

oh! oh!

But this time, the "faint line" on the pregnancy test was (according to the dr’s office) probably a false positive, since I’d just had a miscarriage. After all, it was such a faint line. Just do another one in three days, the nurse advised. That way, you can make sure it’s just a fluke.

Three days later, another extremely faint line. Come on in; we’ll do a blood test.

Somehow, despite the fact that the pregnancy test registered only the tiniest amount of “pregnancy hormone” in my urine, that hormone was apparently raging in my bloodstream. When the OB’s office called to tell me the results the next day, the nurse explained that it had to be a lab error. I was definitely pregnant again, but there was no way I could have numbers this high, and they needed for me to come in immediately for a checkup and ultrasound to see what was going on. “Should I bring a videotape for the ultrasound?” I asked. (Rob was out of town and couldn’t come, so I wanted to be able to show it to him.) No….no video this time, they said. I wondered: if I was pregnant, and they were planning to do an ultrasound (but they didn’t want to videotape the ultrasound) exactly what could be going on????

The mood seemed somber in the little office when I went in for the ultrasound. The doctor explained that (given the time line), I could only be five to five and a half weeks pregnant, meaning the HCG level in my blood should be around 900 (at the most). My level was 97,000. One hundred times too high. Completely abnormal. When I asked if the high number of pregnancy hormone could possibly mean “multiples,” he simply said, No.

He did the ultrasound – without videotaping anything – and there it was…. the tiny little heartbeat fluttering away… the earliest possible time to see the heart beating, since the heart begins beating when the little one is 4 weeks old. I couldn’t understand how there could be anything wrong.

And then he explained how it could be wrong. He asked if I had ever heard of a “molar pregnancy.”

A hydatidiform mole, or molar pregnancy, results from over-production of the tissue that is supposed to develop into the placenta. The placenta normally feeds a fetus during pregnancy. In this condition, the tissues develop into an abnormal growth - a mass.

There can be a “partial molar pregnancy,” which can actually look normal up to a certain point, and there may be “fetal” development until the cells take over and grow abnormally, meaning the pregnancy is over. As if learning that wasn’t enough to take my breath away, he said that the “mole” could be cancerous or develop into cancer, and if it was a molar pregnancy, I would face possible chemotherapy and would have to wait at least a year after treatment to try again.

How could it be this wrong? How unfair to face a third loss so quickly after the second. And I could see the little heartbeat right there .... And I didn’t even have a video to take home with me to show Rob.

The solution – or at least the short-term solution – was to have weekly ultrasounds to monitor the development of the “fetus” – and OH how I hated that word! It didn’t matter that science didn’t see my baby as a baby – I did. The doctor explained that if a hydatitiform mole formed, the beating heart would stop and the tissue would change into abnormal cells, and that we would be able to see that on the ultrasound.

OH how we prayed.

And I insisted on a videotape of the ultrasounds from that point on.

And every week, the little heartbeat grew stronger.

Six ultrasounds later, at 10 ½ weeks pregnant, the OB said the words we’d been wanting to hear. Well, we may never know why the bloodwork was so off in the beginning, but everything looks completely normal at this point. He said we would have already been able to see the characteristic “molar” changes if the pregnancy was cancerous, and since there was nothing abnormal ever detected in the ultrasounds, everything must be fine . . .

Finally, we could share the big news with our friends. Because of the uncertainty from the beginning, we had kept our news quiet, secretly praying for a miracle. And God had answered.

I did my daily shots of blood thinner - right in the belly. I had a very bruised belly to show for it, too. They weren’t fun. Sometimes, they hurt like crazy. But I wasn’t about to complain a bit because whatever it took, I was going to meet this little baby! And because of the blood clotting disorder, I rated “A-1” treatment --- tons of ultrasounds. A total of thirteen, I believe. Oh – and at 12 weeks, we knew it was a boy. Apparently, that’s about the earliest point you can “see” that it’s a boy on an ultrasound. And there was no doubt. So, at 12 weeks, we began to refer to our baby as Alex. Robert Alexander Childers: the little boy I had always wanted.

I was in love with him from the first time I saw that little heartbeat -- early on, even the doctor didn't have a lot of faith that I would stay pregnant. Every ultrasound that followed just deepened that feeling more and more. You can’t convince me that life doesn’t begin at conception. I fully believe that the little boy who lives at my house was planned before I even met his daddy.

So there’s the story of Alex. And that’s one of the many reasons why I call him my miracle baby.

Now do you see why we do birthdays BIG at our house????