Life is Stupidly Unfair: A Mom's Journey of Survival

We found out we were pregnant with Jasmine a few months after a failed fertility treatment.  We had done a treatment that was successful, but then ended in miscarriage.  My HCG levels were falling, but then started rising again, so I had to take a shot of methotrexate.  This meant we had to wait at least three months before trying again.  I found out I was pregnant with her a couple of months after the waiting period was over. I went to my RE for beta levels and everything was rising and doubling perfectly.  All my early ultrasounds with him looked great and she was growing normally and right on track.  I had my first appointment with my OB and everything looked fine on that end as well. It came time to do the NT scan and genetic testing.  They no longer did the NT scan in their office and they referred me out to an MFM to get it done.  We went to the appointment and the tech did the scan.  She showed us the things we were lookin...

I have been fortunate to have a couple of people I know who have also gone through a loss around the same time as me.  We have been able to talk about our feelings and be there for each other because we knew exactly how the other person was feeling.  I hate the circumstances in which we met, but am grateful to have people that understand. While Jasmine did have CDH, in the end it seems like the trisomy was what really caused everything.  So it's hard sometimes to even feel part of the "CDH Community".  I left a lot of the Facebook groups for a while because I just couldn't handle it, but ended up joining a few of them again a couple of months after the loss.  I wanted to be able to be supportive to others who had a baby with trisomy or a baby that didn't make it.   These pages make an effort to be there for both survivors and angel babies.  As much as they try, I know I, and a few others I have talked to, still feel like we aren't part...

When we first got the CDH diagnosis, I was connected with a girl who was also pregnant with a CDH baby.  She added me to several online groups on Facebook.  When I first posted, I got an influx of messages from both parents of survivors and parents of angel babies.  I'll be the first to say, I didn't want to listen to the people with angel babies.  I was thinking "No way this is going to be the ending to my story."  I couldn't stand to see the people post in these groups about losing their baby.  It made me so sad and I didn't want to deal with those feelings.  I was certain my girl was strong and would survive. Now that I am on the other side of things, I see things from a totally new perspective.  After we lost her, I left all the groups because it made me too sad to see the stories of all the survivors.  That should've been my baby that I was posting about.  Posting all of her hospital milestones and then posting finally that w...

As I mentioned before, our daughter Jasmine had been diagnosed at our 12 week ultrasound with CDH (congenital diaphragmatic hernia).  I had never even heard of this before she was diagnosed (even though I later found out there is just as many cases of this per year as cystic fibrosis and spina bifida).  Crazy that it was the only one of the three I hadn't ever heard of.  The cause of CDH is not really known as it seems to sometimes have a genetic component and sometimes it is random.  We were told that they have found links to CDH on every single one of the chromosomes, so they can't even narrow down exactly what causes it.  It is one of those things that many people are told has a 50% survival rate at best and prospects seem bleak.  But there are several specialist locations around the country that focus on CDH and have drastically improved those survival rates. The other issue we were dealing with was mosaic trisomy 15.  This is extremely rar...