Glory Baby

We were keeping this under wraps for the most part, but I have to come clean: we're expecting.

Or so we think.

I had my first OB appointment yesterday. I'm quite certain of my dates, and accordingly, should be about 7 1/2 weeks along. Because I know and work with my OB, she shimmied me in for an ultrasound for a "peek." (Normally, I would not have needed one because I have a regular cycle and my dates aren't questionable, but to have an ultrasound at that point is quite common.)

There was nothing to see.

An empty gestational sac. Which was quite small.

Ohhhhhhhhh...........

My OB believes that my dates are "off." I believe they're not, but it IS possible that I'm a week-ish off. Because the sac was so little, she would not call it a blighted ovum or a miscarriage.

I had a hormone level drawn, and it was an appropriate level for someone who only had a sac yet...as well as an appropriate level for someone who is 1-2 weeks behind where I think I am.

She gives me a 50/50 chance that I may very well be pregnant. Another level will be drawn tomorrow to see if it's increasing appropriately. BUT, in the case of a blighted ovum, that would still reflect an appropriately increasing level, even though there's nothing there.

A blighted ovum is a fertilized egg that implants and starts to form a gestational sac and a placenta, but no baby grows inside. This is usually the result of a chromosomal abnormality that is bad enough that there's really no point in growing a baby at all. About 50% of miscarriages are the result of a blighted ovum. Unfortunately, it's a sticky wicket because the placenta is there, and the placenta is what produces the hormones, so your bloodwork can make it appear that all is well. The gestational sac can even grow, even with nothing inside of it.

BUT - I know people who were told they had a blighted ovum and a few weeks later there was a thriving, healthy little bambino in there.

Maybe God has our baby tucked so tightly in His hem that we just couldn't see it.

Either way, we wait. Either way, His glory will be displayed, whether He knits this child together, or He walks with us through a valley. Either way, it's a win-win situation for this baby: either he or she gets a ticket straight to heaven from the closest place on earth TO heaven...or he or she gets to grow and thrive and live. And I want what's best for him or her.

Either way, I get a child to hold in my arms in July...or a glory baby to hold in my arms in heaven.