IT"S A BOY!!!

We are so excited to announce that we are having a baby BOY! It came as a bit of a surprise because I (Melissa) was convinced it was a girl. Even though I was surprised, I couldn't be happier! As we sat in the room watching our baby on the ultrasound screen, I couldn't help but be amazed at the number of times they used the word "normal." I think Tyson and I can safely say, that we will never take having a healthy baby for granted. We will go back to the high risk doctor one more time so they can take a closer look at the heart. I was a bit surprised they wanted to do this because we could see all 4 chambers and the blood flow was good. But it is better to be safe and we will get another ultrasound... can't resist that. :)

I can't say thank you enough to everyone who has prayed for our baby's health. We feel beyond blessed to be having another baby and we can't wait until he is finally here!

Good News

We went to our high risk doctor on Friday and had an ultrasound. They said everything looked great. The main things they were looking for were neck thickness (needed to be below 2.5), a nasal bone (in DS babies, these are not visible at 12 weeks), and a good measurement from head to rump. The neck thickness of our baby measured in at 1.2, they found a nasal bone very easily, and he/she measured perfectly from head to rump! They took blood to do testing as well. We got the results back yesterday and they were AWESOME! Because of Noah's down syndrome, we had a 1 in 136 chance of having another baby with DS. After the testing, we now have a 1 in 2700 chance of DS and a 1 in 10,000 chance of 2 deadly genetic disorders. Obviously, we are thrilled with this news. It definitely helps us sleep better at night. :) We go back for a follow up ultrasound on November 12th. They will be able to tell us the gender which is especially exciting since we will only be 16 weeks pregnant and they usually don't do that until 20 weeks. As long as that appointment goes well, we will not have to go back to that office again.

I (Melissa) just returned from Maryland and had a wonderful visit with my mom and other family. We did some shopping (of course!) and unpacked a few more of my mom's boxes. She is well on her way to making a beautiful new home for herself. I especially love the paint colors (that one's for you Aunt B!). This afternoon, we are heading to South Dakota to meet our new nephew, Tate. We are excited to meet Tate and see our family there.

Once again, we are thankful for all of your prayers as we go through this journey. Hopefully, we will be much less drama in 2011! :)

New nephew Tate Noah Johnson

Here We Go Again

Tomorrow we will be 11 weeks pregnant... wait didn't we just do this?!??! That is how I (Melissa) am feeling about being sick again. :) While I have been sick (and pregnant) most of 2010, I am so thankful for the blessing of pregnancy. I find myself anticipating the arrival of this baby more everyday and that helps me get through the tough days. We have SIX doctor's appointments over the next 2 months that we are anxiously awaiting. We will see Dr. Stettler (high risk doctor) 3 times as well as Dr. Voss (regular OB) 3 times. Next Friday, we will have the first trimester screens done and then in November, we will get a 16 week ultrasound. Hopefully, after those 2 appointments, we can have some peace of mind that everything is going to be ok. Its so hard to believe that after what we have experienced but we are trusting God that He will give us a perfect, healthy baby.

In other news, we welcomed our new nephew, Tate Noah Johnson, into the world yesterday. I have only seen 2 pictures but he is SOOO CUTE! He definitely looks like a Johnson. :) We are honored that Tyson's brother Cory named his son after our son.

Next week is my fall break so I am headed to Maryland to see my family. The day after I get back, we are headed to Aberdeen, SD to meet Tate and visit with our Johnson family. Can't wait! We are praying I feel well enough for both trips. We'll see!

Thankful

Although most people already know, I thought I would post on the blog for those that haven't heard. We are pregnant!!! :) We are beyond excited. We found out VERY early on because the signs were so clear. We will be 7 weeks along on Saturday and our approximate due date is April 30th. We have our first doctor's appointment on September 22nd. We will get a confirmed due date then. We are nervous, but we are trusting God that everything is going to turn out great.

September is a difficult month for us. The 19th marks the one year anniversary of Melissa's dad's death. The 23rd was going to be our due date for Noah. We are thankful to have the distraction of a new baby, but we still mourn the loss of an incredible father and a baby we will never know. We would appreciate prayer over the next few weeks.

Melissa is starting to get evening sickness. It isn't too bad yet and we are praying it stays that way. :) For those of you who don't know, Melissa was miserably sick until week 20 last time. We are hoping EVERYTHING about this pregnancy is different. :)

In other news, we enjoyed an amazing vacation to San Diego and Las Vegas at the end of July. We spent some time on the beach and were able to see some of our best friends, Sheila and Jeff, and their 2 kids Logan and Savannah. We had SO MUCH fun. We definitely needed a break and this was the perfect getaway. Tyson posted pictures on Facebook yesterday if you want to see a few highlights. We also went to Yellowstone National Park over Labor Day weekend. We spent some great time with Melissa's best friend Jessica and we saw some amazing sights in the park.

We don't have a lot going on in the next few months since we are planning on Melissa being sick (we aren't pessimistic, just realistic!). :) Melissa has a trip to Maryland planned for October to see her mom's new house and hang out with family and friends.

We are so thankful to have amazing family and friends that have stood by our sides in both the difficult and the good times. We are blessed.

Continued Blessings

I got a phone call from Human Resources this morning and there is a FACS job for me at Castle Rock Middle School! It is definitely through January and possibly through the end of the year. This is such a HUGE blessing! The odds of this happening were SOOO small. The only bad news is that we have to cancel our trip to Mexico and our trip to MD to help my mom move. We are planning a weekend getaway to San Diego. We leave (hopefully!) on Thursday! My first day is August 4th... less than 2 weeks! I am feeling a little overwhelmed, especially since I haven't taught middle school since my student teaching in 2005. But I am incredibly excited! Teaching is my passion and I am so thankful to be able to teach for at least the next 6 months. It is such a good reminder that God cares about the little things.

Melissa's Job

I had a meeting today with HR to discuss what this next year is going to look like for me. In the original plan, I was taking a one year leave of absence with the guarantee of my same job when I come back for the 2011-2012 school year. In this plan, I was going to get paid out all of my sick days, get 6 weeks maternity leave, and health insurance for 12 weeks. Normally, I would not get all of this but since I was doing them a favor, they made exceptions for me. (I would tell all the details of how I am doing them a "favor" but that gets complicated.) Essentially, I would get a full-time paycheck for just over 3 months and not have to show up... GREAT deal for me!

Obviously, the situation has changed drastically so I had no idea what to expect when I went in there today. They can't give me my regular job back because someone else has already been hired for the position on a one year only contract (this we already knew). As a result, my best bet is to sub for the year. If a FACS job comes up, I will have first dibs but since that is not likely to happen, I will be subbing. Subs make GREAT money in our school district ($150 a day) so financially, this is an awesome option. Also, the school district is sticking with the original plan so I will still be getting paid for all of my sick days, maternity leave, and get 12 weeks of health insurance. WOW! I am so thankful that they are willing to stick with our agreement even though they don't have to. I can't start subbing until my maternity leave is up (sometime in early October) so what's my plan until then? Iwill probably get a retail job at the Gap Outlet in Castle Rock or the Gap at Park Meadows mall (where I worked when I first moved to Colorado and was waiting for my teaching job to start). Oh and I still get my regular job back for the next school year. :)

Even though this next year looks NOTHING like what we had planned, we are so thankful for how God is already providing for us. For those of you that prayed for this job situation, THANK YOU! This is definitely the best case scenario for a terrible situation.

Update

I thought I would give a brief update since everyone has been wondering how we are doing. We are doing as well as can be expected at this point. We are trying our best to live life as normally as possible. Melissa rejoined the gym and has spent a lot of quality time with friends during her summer off. She is also planning to go to Maryland to help her mom move sometime in August or September. Tyson is planning a vacation to Mexico that we hope to take in August.

Many people have also asked what Melissa is going to do this next school year since she took a leave of absence to stay home with the baby. As of right now, the leave of absence cannot be rescinded. She has a meeting with HR and the benefits department next Thursday to go over our options. It looks like she will have to sub for the year. Fortunately, her job is guaranteed for the 2011-2012 school year.

We are so thankful for the dozens of cards and letters we have received. Again, we are humbled by people's generosity. Thanks for your continued prayers and support.

Meeting our Baby Boy

Noah Stewart Johnson was born at 9:28pm on June 17th. We chose the name Noah because it means comfort and rest. We chose the name Stewart in honor of Melissa's dad who passed away in September of 2009. He is the most beautiful baby we have ever seen and we miss him every second of every day.

The whole process took about 24 hours from the start of induction to delivery. We spent about an hour with Noah after he was born. We spent another night at the hospital to make sure there were no complications and then went home at about 9am Friday morning. Physically, Melissa is recovering well.

We appreciate all of the phone calls, texts, emails, and Facebook messages. It is amazing to us how many people care about what is going on in our lives. We love you all. Thank you for sharing this journey with us. While we do not understand why this happened, we know that God has a plan for us and we are excited about what the future holds.

More bad news

We went to the doctor earlier yesterday (6/16) and they were not able to detect a heartbeat. After 26 weeks, this journey is coming to an end. The outcome is obviously not what we wanted or ever imagined would happen, but we're trusting God's sovereignty on this one since we can't really make sense of it. There is comfort in knowing that our baby boy is healed and resting eternally with his heavenly father.

Melissa was induced last night and hopefully the baby will be delivered sometime today, although it can take quite a while when labor is induced so early. Right now, Melissa is resting. She got an epidural an hour ago so right now the physical pain is pretty low. Please pray for Melissa's safety and comfort through the delivery process, as well as for our healing.

We're pretty devastated but we know we'll be ok. Thanks for your prayers and for loving us. We'll post again once our little boy has been delivered.

Heavy Hearts

We write this update today with very heavy hearts. We had another ultrasound this morning to find out if our baby is growing. It turns out that as a result of the down syndrome, his little body does not know how to use the nutrition it is getting. He has hardly grown at all in the last 3 weeks. Chances are that he will stop growing all together. Unfortunately, he is not yet big enough to live outside the womb so there is nothing we can do to save him. Our hope rests now in God that He will choose to save our baby boy. There is a small chance that he could start growing and reach the point of viability. We return to the doctor next week to get another ultrasound to see how he is doing. We ask that everyone pray with us for a miracle.

Brief Update

We spent a few hours today with our new nurse practioner Deb. She is AWESOME! Not only did she not make us feel stupid when we showed up for our appointment 4 hours early (totally Melissa's fault!) but she was also super sensitive to my (Melissa) emotional breakdowns and provided an incredible amount of support for us already. We feel blessed to be connected to her. Our main source of support will now be her and the Mile High Down Syndrome Association. Sometime soon, the MHDSA will call us so we can get connected with a mentor family. They will also be our main source of information and help us get connected with resources that we will need after Junior is born. It is so nice to know that we don't have to figure this all out ourselves. They will hold our hands the whole way and we could not be more greatful for that. We also got 2 books today that we are looking forward to reading. Our next appointment is on Wednesday the 9th and we will get another ultrasound to make sure Junior is still growing. We will continue to go to the doctor every 2 weeks and get an ultrasound every 4 weeks to measure growth.

Right now, we are continuing to get ready for Junior to come! Since bed rest will most likely be in Melissa's future, we hope to have everything ready by the end of July. Melissa is feeling SO much better these days and has a lot more energy... part of that could be that she is no longer working and doesn't deal with teenage drama everyday anymore :) We continue to be thankful for all of the support we have received over the last few weeks.

Test Results Part 2

Just a quick update...

We got the final results from the amniocentesis today. The results confirmed Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome). Of course this isn't a surprise. I (Melissa) am making my summer to-do list and the top of the list is getting educated on DS and how we can best care for our baby. There is so much that we can do for our child to give him a better life and we plan to do all of it. :) We are blessed to live in a great school district that offers various services for special needs children, many that are FREE. It is amazing how God worked out taking the year off from teaching , long before we knew our child would have DS. Many people have asked if I will return to teaching in 2011. I honestly do not know. The plan was to go back part-time but now that Junior has DS, there is a good chance that I will not return for a few years. We will probably have a better idea after we figure out the severity of the DS and the kind of care that will be required. Our next doctor's appointment is June 1st. I will post another update then.

Ultrasound Pictures

Expecting the Unexpected

We got our amniocentesis test results this afternoon. Our baby does in fact have Down Syndrome. We are overwhelmed by the news but we know that God gave us this precious baby boy and we are so excited to be his parents. Now we pick out a name, continue registering, and do everything else first time parents do. We are so thankful for the support we have received from our incredible family and friends! Please continue to pray for us as we process this news and prepare to be parents to a special needs child.

Growing Belly

This is Melissa at 16 weeks, just starting to show.

20 weeks. Happy Mother's Day!!

First baby picture!

This is a picture from our first ultrasound at 8 weeks. More pictures to come!

Now What?

Now we wait for the results of the amnio test. By Monday (May 17th) we should know whether or not the baby has Down's Syndrome, Trisomy 13, or Trisomy 18 (although at this point it seems like 13 and 18 have essentially been ruled out). A week later, we'll get the rest of the results, although Down's is the primary concern so Monday is really the big day.

The truth is that we really hope the baby doesn't have Down's. If it ends up that he does have Down's, we're ready to accept it and plan for it, as hard as it would be. We'd strive to be thankful that God entrusted us with the care of a baby with special needs, and we know we'd love him just as much either way. It's amazing how much we've already connected with this little life, how much we love him, and how big of a part of our family he is.

We're so thankful for all the prayers, support, and encouragement that we've gotten from family and friends in the past few days. It's been a challenging 3 days and we couldn't have gotten through it alone. I think we're both surprised at how well we're doing. We had about 15 people over last night to play cards and today we're going to the Rockies game and planting our garden! We would love your continued prayers during the upcoming weeks and months until our baby is safely home.

More Ultrasounds - More Doctors

On Thursday at 1pm we had our appointment with the perinatologist, Dr Stettler. A perinatologist is a doctor that specializes in high risk pregnancies. They did an additional ultrasound and basically re-did everything that was had been done the day before. The findings were similar, although Dr Stettler was much less concerned about the heart, but he did have us visit a pediatric cardiologist, later that day.

The main issue with the new ultrasound was the baby's intestines. The baby has a duodenal atresia, which means the small intestine doesn't connect to the stomach. The fact that they can see this on an ultrasound is pretty amazing to us. The duodenal atresia is the reason why the stomach is enlarged. 30% of all babies with duodenal atresias also have Down's Syndrome. Dr Stettler confirmed that babies with chromosomal abnormalities tend to be smaller. Because of that, he recommended that we get an amniocentesis, which would test all of the baby's chromosomes and determine whether or not there are any abnormalities. We'll have some results early next week, and then the rest a week later. The primary concern (in terms of chromosomal abnormalities) is Down's Syndrome.

So what about this duodenal atresia? The duodenal atresia can be fixed! Shortly after birth (within a few days), the baby will have a surgery to connect the small intestine to the stomach. Based on what I've read online, it will take about 2 hours, and has a very high success rate and rarely comes with complications. I've also read that depending on how things go, he could be in the hospital for 2 weeks or longer after the surgery. That sucks. Basically, he won't be able to poop until the small intestine is connected to the stomach, and it takes some time for the surgery to heal and everything to start working correctly. This also means that he won't be able to eat, so he will be fed through an IV in the beginning.

Another issue with the duodenal atresia is due to the baby's stomach issues, he won't be able to swallow very well in the womb. That results in the amniotic fluid building up faster than normal, which usually means premature delivery. Most of the cases I read about online ended up delivering 2 weeks to a month early. Because our baby needs surgery right after birth, he'll now be born at Presbyterian St Luke's in downtown Denver, instead of Skyridge. Our prenatal care has been transferred to Dr Stettler, since this is now considered a higher risk pregnancy.

Lastly, the best news of the day. After seeing Dr Stettler, we went to see the pediatric cardiologist (Dr Miller) on the other side of the hospital. Long story short, there's really nothing wrong with our baby's heart. Due to the way the chambers pump before birth, one chamber appeared to be slightly enlarged, but Dr Miller said it really wasn't enlarged and everything is fine. He predicted that he'll never see us again. Woohoo!! Because 50% of Down's babies have heart problems, he said that might be an argument that our chance of Down's is less than 30%. At this point, we're much more interest in the results of the amnio as opposed to statistics!

Abnormalities

The joy and excitement of finding out that our baby was a boy came to a screeching halt about 30 minutes after we found out. Our ultrasound appointment was this past Wednesday (May 12th) at 3pm. We were scheduled to see our OB (Dr Voss) at 4pm. While we were waiting for the OB, we called our moms, sent text messages, updated Facebook, etc, so the whole world would know that Baby Johnson is a boy. That's when the OB came in and said "we need to talk about the results of the ultrasound". It was pretty clear that something was wrong.

To back up - Our due date is September 23rd. As the ultrasound tech was taking different measurements, the screen kept displaying estimated delivery dates around October 10th (just over 2 weeks later than our actual due date). I looked at the calendar on my phone and we knew for sure that those dates were wrong. But we just figured that the baby was small. That seemed to make sense since his momma's small.

As it turns out, there's not a ton of variance in size for babies this early (21 weeks), as opposed to the last 2 months of a pregnancy where growth can vary significantly from baby to baby. It could be completely normal to be a little small, but it could also be a sign of chromosomal abnormalities. In addition to the baby being small, the ultrasound also revealed an enlarged stomach and a "prominent" heart. The OB at first said the heart was enlarged but then changed her wording to prominent.

According to Dr Voss, each of these issues individually can be indicators of chromosomal abnormalities such as Down's Syndrome, Trisomy 13, and Trisomy 18. Trisomy 13 and 18 are very serious abnormalities that have very high miscarriage/stillbirth rates and babies with those conditions have less than a 1% chance of living past their first birthday (which we didn't know until later that evening).

So this was all very shocking to us, and very frightening. Dr Voss was able to call a perinatologist (located just down the hall), who was able to get us in the very next day (Thursday May 13th). So we went home pretty teary eyed and in total shock. 30 minutes earlier we were ecstatic to finally know the sex of our baby, and now we were scared, devastated, and in shock.

That night we called family and did lots of research on various chromosomal abnormalities. Learning about Trisomy 13 and 18 made the situation even more frightening. Despite our fear, we tried our best to trust God's sovereignty over the situation, although I'm not so sure we did a great job of it that night!

It's a boy!

At long last, we have learned that our first baby will be a boy. Being first time parents, we had no idea that the ultrasound would take an hour, and that the gender would be the last thing they looked at. But after waiting for an hour, we finally learned that our baby is a boy. Like most first time parents, we didn't really have a preference and knew we would be excited either way.