Monday 7 May 2012

Our Story

On the 24th of March 2012 our lives changed in a way that we were yet to comprehend. We knew our darling baby girl would be born with gastroschisis; a 1 in 5000 birth defect in which there is a cavity in the babies abdominal wall causing large and small intestines to protrude from the body. I would like to share our journey as parents and more importantly Jessie's journey in being a gastroschisis survivor.

Through this blog I want to share our journey to get our baby girl better and home, and create some awareness. A lot of people tell me they have never heard of gastroschisis and while the stats say its only 1 in 5000, it is fairly common.

It has been, and still is, a very emotional thing to go through. I'll never forget the day the doctors told us our baby had a problem. We went into our 14 week Nuchal Translucency scan, it was a "just in case" sort of thing and really I just wanted another excuse to see our baby again. After about 40 minutes of scanning and happily watching our baby move around the sonographer told us there was a defect. We had never heard of gastroschisis and after a lot of tears together, and with our family, we set about researching every single possible piece of information that was available. I googled, you tubed, read about, dreamed about, obsessed about, finding out what our baby would be facing.

There were days at work I couldn't even talk on the phone, I would just start crying. I would see a mum with their perfect new baby and think "that wont be me". The thoughts of, what did I do wrong to deserve this to happen and 'why me' plagued my mind day and night. I could never relax and just enjoy being pregnant. There were countless scans and specialist appointments, counseling, and down days. If it weren't for such an amazingly supportive family I couldn't have remained so strong.

Jessie is now 43 days old, and I will continue to tell her story, share information, links, photos and (if I can figure out how to do it) some video's of our brave little girl. I feel that the world should know about her, because she truly is a fighter, and in our eyes the bravest girl in the world.

Stay tuned for more and thank you for your support.

Jodi x

No comments:

Post a Comment