No Spida Bifida!

Today is the most nervous I’ve felt in a long time. I can’t help playing over in my mind all the possible scenarios that the doctor might say. As we’re waiting in the clinic, I’m on my laptop playing solitaire to take my mind off my worries. The wife probably thought I didn’t have a care in the world. (Psst! I do care! I just needed a distraction, OK?)

As a typical man, I keep my emotions inside. I hadn’t really talked about how I felt about this whole situation with anyone. I’ve mainly stayed quiet and listened to what my wife had to say instead. I don’t want her to know I’m scared too. Someone needs to be the strong one, even if it’s just an act.

As the doctor looks at the ultrasound, we tell him what the other doctor said. He immediately derides the other doctor and tells us that our baby has no spina bifida and no lemon head. He says this with a resolved look on his face, as if daring us to challenge his verdict.

I begin cranking out facts that I’ve picked up in my research, but he seems unimpressed and unmoved. “No spina bifida! No lemon head!” 

And to top this off, he proceeds to say that he’s 90% certain our baby is a girl, not a boy.

Whelp, I’m officially confused now. Everything this doctor has said is the complete opposite of what the one at the hospital said. I might as well close my eyes and randomly pick who to believe. So much for getting closure on this matter, but at least there’s still a chance our baby is OK.

We decide the best thing to do is to go visit a third doctor and have a tie-breaker. If the other two doctors were complete opposites of each other, this one sat neutrally in the middle. He didn’t confirm whether our baby had any defects or not, just that we needed to wait for the blood tests to be sure. Sigh.

And as if we didn’t have enough worries, he tells us that our baby has some choroid plexus cysts in the brain. For crying out loud! Haven’t we been through enough already?! 

Thankfully, it sounds worse than it really is. A choroid plexus cyst is a fluid-filled space in the choroid plexus, which is the part of the brain that produces fluids essential to the brain and spinal cord. Typically, these disappear by the third trimester. 99% of babies who have choroid plexus cysts are born healthy. 

I decide to have faith in these numbers and not let it affect my sleep. It’s already been a tiring past two nights, and I don’t need another one.