Xie and I had been anti-kids our whole relationship. Well, anti-kids is pretty strong. We will leave it at the fact that we had no plans to ever have any children. Even after the ectopic pregnancy we didn’t have any plans. It was something that if it happened we would handle it, if it didn’t we wouldn’t feel that we were lacking anything in our lives. So when we found out Xie was pregnant again, six months after the ectopic pregnancy we were a bit surprised. Keep in mind that up until 2007 Xie had never been pregnant — so we assumed that it wouldn’t happen. So within eight months she had been pregnant twice.
After what we went through six months prior we still waited a couple months before telling any family. We didn’t know what to expect or if we were going to have a repeat. Well eventually we passed the information across the family. It also shows that even though I don’t speak to my mother, some news passes across borders. I told my father and then the next day drove up north to tell my grandmother, well they feigned surprise — but I found out from my sister who I visited after leaving their house that they already knew. I confronted them on the subterfuge, but they said they didn’t want ot ruin it for us. Welcome to the back channels and gossip that runs in the back current of my family that no one wants to admit occurs.
During the pregnancy mostly things went normal. There was a couple concerns the first and one that still exists is that he had a multi-cystic non functioning kidney. So essentially today he only has one kidney. This is something that they have only been tracking in the last few years, and one in every 750 births there is instance of a child being born with only one functional kidney. My sister through different circumstances has had a single her whole life, and things have been normal for her. I don’t anticipate it effecting my son’s quality of life too much with the exception of what sports he can be involved with.
The other issue was that a couple of tubes in the cranial cavity were enlarged that could lead to learning disabilities in life. This test was reversed on the next and subsequent visits. So this is really a null issue, but something we dealt with. One thing they kept trying to pressure to get done was the test for Down’s Syndrome. It’s not covered by insurance and unless abortion is an option for you if it comes back positive (which wasn’t for us) it’s completely useless. Every doctor visit where I went along they kept trying to push it. The thing with this test is that there is nothing they can do one way or the other, it’s just to be informed. I guess there are just somethings we were willing to leave to surprise. Xie had to hold appointments at two different doctors and at the end of pregnancy was going to one or both every week.
Depending on who you asked the baby was due either February 16th or 18th. We had bags packed and procedures in place. Xie even bought a new (used) car on February 23rd in preparation. We were getting ready to start planning to have the baby induced when I got a call on Thursday February 26th.…
Continued in part 3 coming next week.