Bad news, good news

Every town, has its ups and downs, and this weekend we had some of both. The rollercoaster started on Thursday when the doctor’s office finally got in touch with Alixa after several days of phone tag. It was Nurse Kitty (names have not been changed so that the responsible parties can be held accountable,) and she had some troubling news about the ultrasound that had been taken. Upon further review, she said, there was a bright spot on the baby’s heart, which is an indicator of Down syndrome. She told Alixa that this was normal for 10% of cases. Obviously, those are not good odds. For the next 5 days we spent a lot of time worrying and preparing ourselves for the probable arrival of a baby that was going to be different from what we had been hoping for. There were some tears shed, mostly by Jarom, and some research done on what having a kid with Down syndrome would really entail. Lix tried to call Dr. Kitty (not to be confused with Nurse Kitty) to get some answers to a few questions that she and Jarom had, but was unable to get in touch with her because of some days off and some night shifts that were being worked. They set up another ultrasound appointment for Tuesday afternoon, and were cautiously optimistic. The ultrasound went well, and the Tech had nothing but good things to say. The weird thing was the calm, nonchalant way that she shared the good news. It was like it was no big deal at all. Then the ultrasound doctor came in, and it was more of the same. “Everything looks good”, “perfectly normal” and “no big deal” kept being thrown around, but without any of the excitement that might accompany finding out you were in the lucky 10% of a group. So Jarom asked for some more detailed clarification about the risk probability. The ultrasound doc said that the white spot was a calcium buildup that raised the baby’s risk factor from approximately 1 in 8362 to 1 in 8000. She said it might be more worrisome if Lix were older or if there were other signs (there weren’t) but that given her age and other test results everything looked pretty normal. This was both a huge relief and very confusing to Jarom and Alixa, who then went down the hall to talk to Dr. Kitty. They voiced their confusion at the 180 that had been pulled, and then got their explanation. It turns out that about 10% of all babies develop these calcium buildups in their hearts, and that of those who have them, only a very small percentage have Down syndrome. So I guess Nurse Kitty went to the same medical school as the guy from Arrested Development.




After all is said and done, I guess it was a good experience because Jarom and Lix found out that this baby is still healthy, but also learned that they will still love him even if he isn’t perfect.

Doing her best seductive pose

Sometimes it is hard to find a place to put your cup when you finish drinking

On a lighter note, Alixa had an embarrassing moment yesterday. She was babysitting Kenna so that Nate and Kenz could go out for their anniversary, and while she was over at their house she heard a knock on the door. As she typically does, she assumed that it was someone trying to break in and kill her, but was also polite enough to knock. She called Jarom and explained the situation in her best library voice, but he simply laughed at her and told her to go look through the peephole to see who it was. He even offered to stay on the line so that he could call the police in case of an attack. However, she refused to go near the door, using the classic 2-year-old reasoning of “If I don’t look at him, he will disappear.” Jarom continued trying to convince her to at least go to the door and look outside. After about 5 minutes of making the intruder stand out in the below-freezing temperature, Jarom remembered that she had told her visiting teachers to visit her at Kenzie’s house that evening, and she went and let them in. It is amazing how strongly paranoia governs some people’s lives. Merry Christmas nice ladies who came to share a kind message with me, hope you didn’t get frostbite.

This table had been set up for guests, but Jenna thought it would be fun to rearrange it so everyone had to eat backwards