What Are The Odds?

Being pregnant is definitely not what TV/movies paint it out to be... but I guess nothing ever is.  So far, it has been a roller coaster of emotions, lots of nausea, and a lot of "is there really anything in there?".  The excitement always seems to outweigh the anxiety, and registering for all the cute and helpful baby "stuff" certainly adds some fun to these first few months where I don't yet feel kicking but know there's a little bugger in there growing and bouncing around.  Being a pretty anxious person in general (I'm hoping you have never seen me fly), I spend a lot of time wondering how the little guy/girl is doing and hoping that he/she is doing just fine.  Like I said in my last post, the 4 weeks in between each appointment can really wear on you when you just don't know what's really going on in there!  My doctor always tried to reassure me that the odds of something happening are so small once we reached the 12 and 16 week marks that it makes no sense to think anything other than that it's all going well.  The odds are something like less than 1% of women carrying babies with strong heartbeats after 16 weeks will miscarry.  This, in all logical thinking, should give me peace of mind.

And then there are odds for many other things... the odds that the baby will have a birth defect, Down's Syndrome (which I was told are higher for me delivering at 31 than they would have been if I was a few years younger), and any other number of health or developmental issues.  (See why I'm anxious?)  And yet, the odds (and my doctor) tell me that I shouldn't worry.  1 in 1000, 1 in 750, or even 1 in 100 are pretty good odds for a mother to be.  And this should comfort me...

That is until the odds don't seem to matter anymore.  Or they get smaller.  And then all of a sudden odds seem ridiculous.  That 1 person in 1000 certainly didn't benefit from any odds.  Neither did that 1 in 100.  And recently, Matt and I both learned this reality firsthand. 

After declining all of the genetic testing for our baby, I somehow decided that it would be okay to get screened for the cystic fibrosis gene - it was a simple cheek swab that would tell me if I was a carrier for this disease or not.  Seemed pretty easy!  The odds of even being a carrier are 1 in 30, so I figured I may as well find out.  With no family history of cystic fibrosis that I could find, I was pretty shocked to learn two weeks later that indeed I was a carrier of the gene (a recessive gene, hence the lack of family history).  I was told not to worry, the chances that Matt had the gene as well were again 1 in 30 (so the chances of us BOTH having it were extremely small), and we both had to be carriers for any child to be born with the disease.  And so, Matt dutifully went in to the doctor's office, got his cheek swabbed, and waited.

Two weeks later, I got the call from my OB that - odds be damned - Matt is indeed a carrier of the CF gene as well.  Who would have known?  This information was followed shortly with something along the lines of..."this means that your baby has a 1 in 4 chance of being born with CF...", "keep in mind that there's a 75% chance that  your baby will be born healthy...", "some CF gene-carrying parents choose to do IVF for future children so as to make sure the gene is not passed on...", "I'd like you to make an appointment with a high risk OB just for a consultation...", and some other stuff that is all a little blurred at the moment.  One in four.  That's all that kept running through my head.

After many many, many tears, I came home and did a little research about CF (feel free to visit www.cff.org) and was happy to learn that many CF kids go on to live happy, generally healthy lives, but sad to read the staggering fact that "the predicted median age of survival for a person with CF is in the mid-30s."  Wow... 


I'm not quite ready to talk about this all that much, but I did want to get my thoughts out there for now (the tears don't come as easily as when I say it out loud).  Matt and I are both digesting/processing all of this information and praying that our baby, with CF or not, is happy and healthy.  We trust that God has a plan that is bigger than our own, both now and in the future, and that our baby is in His hands for the next five months (and forever).  As a friend was gracious in reminding me, I feel comfort that God is more powerful than me or any doctor.  And as she has offered to pray with Eph. 3:20 in mind ("now to Him who is able to do IMMEASURABLY more than all we can ask or imagine..."), so too do we.  No matter what, we know that he/she will be incredibly loved by the two of us and by the amazing friends and family surrounding us.

But, still.  I hate odds.