Our pregnancy journey has been filled with many obstacles to overcome. I was first diagnosed with endometriosis when I was 16, and because of the damage caused by this disease, I’ve had many medical challenges including numerous surgeries, shots to put me through menopause, and birth control methods to try to lengthen the time I had to get pregnant. My odds were never good for our first pregnancy and seemed almost impossible for the second pregnancy. My husband and I spent years trying methods to conceive and praying that God would send us a second miracle.

On one of my visits to see Dr. Lynda Gilliam at Parkway, who has always been amazing, it was decided to send me for further treatment at the Kirklin Clinic in Birmingham. There I underwent a surgery to repair my tubes and to try to remove/treat as much of the endometriosis as possible. I then went on an infertility drug and regiment. When I went back for them to check and make sure the drugs were working and that I was actually ovulating, they found that only one of my ovaries was reacting to the treatment. I was thinking, “great…now my odds have gone down even more!” But I knew that God would see us through another challenge and with His help, if I was meant to have another baby, I would, if not, then I already had one miracle at home!

I ended up taking the infertility drugs for 4 months before I got pregnant. My hopes had been crushed so many times in the past that every month I just automatically expected to find that I wasn’t pregnant. Miraculously on May 30th I took a test expecting the worst again, but it said “PREGNANT”! This was too good to be true! My husband and I were so grateful and overwhelmed with excitement! We went through the typical ecstatic motions as any other couple which led us to our 20 week visit and ultrasound to find out the sex of our little one. After many tries, they were unable to determine the baby’s sex, but there was more. When Dr. Hoffman walked into my exam room I knew there was something wrong. They found that our baby has a cleft lip on the left side of its mouth. My heart sank! As a mother, you never want to hear that there is something wrong with your baby, so to be confronted with this news was staggering. My immediate reaction was selfish, all I could think was, “after all I’ve been through already, why me…why my baby?” It was something my husband and I had never experienced, and we were scared! We were then referred to a fetal internal medicine doctor for a targeted ultrasound to look at the cleft lip, to check her heart and to test for other chromosomal diseases associated with a cleft lip. I just couldn’t understand how this could happen. I had taken my medicine and done everything I was supposed to, didn’t have external factors like drinking or smoking while pregnant and cleft lips do not run in our families. It just didn’t make any sense. The targeted ultrasound confirmed the cleft lip on the left side of her mouth as well as a cleft palate reaching to ½ or more of her palate. The heart echo came back normal so we were able to breathe a sigh of relief.

The next step was an amniocentesis. I was terrified, but had to know if there was something else wrong with the baby that we needed to prepare ourselves for. It was the most painful and uncomfortable thing I’ve ever experienced! Then, once again, we had to wait on the results. The waiting through the entire process was one of the worst things! When they tell you something could be wrong with your baby, but it takes weeks to go through all the tests and get results, it takes a toll on you. They called with our amnio results and everything that they tested for came back normal! You can’t imagine what kind of relief that was. We also found out the definite sex of our baby – IT’S A GIRL! We were relieved at the news, but worried because we still don’t know exactly what to expect. Unfortunately there are a lot of things they can’t tell us for sure until she is born and they can evaluate the severity of her cleft lip and palate. There are so many problems associated with cleft lip/palate that I can’t help but think… what if.

As my due date gets closer, I am sometimes overwhelmed with fear about feeding and taking care of her. The doctors have said that they are estimating for her to undergo 2-4 surgeries to repair the cleft lip and palate, starting when she’s about 4-6 weeks old. It seems like we’ve been going through a very emotional nightmare throughout this entire pregnancy. We are still going to have a long, hard journey, but we are blessed. God has given us this miracle for a reason, and I thank Him every day for my AnnaLee