April 27th 2007: My labor

April 27th 2007: My labor was a total of 3 hours from start to finish. Wynter was born at home at 8:10pm. She was 7lbs / 9oz and 18 1/2 inches long. I remember seeing her arms just fall open as if she could not hold them together. I looked at her, and wondered. I remember brushing off my initial thoughts of something being wrong. I had such a hard pregnancy, that I just wanted to be alone for a moment. But the midwife stayed very persistent that the baby needed to nurse. When everyone left our home that night, the midwife told me to wake her up every few hours and make her nurse and told me she would be back tomorrow. I didn't read into what she was saying during that moment in time. We were not able to wake Wynter up all night...we started to get worried because she slept for 14 hours before we were able to wake her up to eat again. The midwife arrived early afternoon and stated her concern: she thought that Wynter had several signs of having Trisonomy 21. Every thought that had crossed my mind in the past 18 hours hit me like a wall. I knew it was true. I think I had known all along, even during my pregnancy. Those are just not thoughts that you indulge as being true...you just explain it away as being worried, but people reassure you that everything would be fine. Things were not fine. They were shattered. Devastated is not even a strong enough word. Such a fear of the unknown. What does it mean for her, for us...? So many unanswered questions. It was Saturday. We would have to wait until Monday to call and schedule her 3 day check up. You cry. You second guess. You barter with God and pray for anything else but “this”. We even looked at family pictures and there were some strong similarities, so we even tried to just say it was just a “family look”. They took some blood and sent it off to be checked. One whole week later, they confirmed that Wynter had Robertsonian Translocation Trisonomy 21. A rare form of Down Syndrome. Wynter was also VERY jaundice her first week of life, we had to drive her up to the lab every day for them to check her billiruben count, which at one point was up to 17...dangerously high~ she had to live her first week of life wrapped up in a “billi~blanket”.