Informed

That day over four years ago when we got the results from my triple screen back still resonates in my mind. The fact that we were high risk for some kind of chromosomal abnormality hit me like a ton of bricks.

The fact that Tom and I agreed to not even talk about what this might mean and any 'options' until we'd had that level two ultrasound two weeks later still sits there in my memory.

I look at Olivia, her sweet three-year-oldness, her naughty streak that leads her to dump cup after cup of water out of the bath onto the floor just because I have my back turned in the kitchen (which is RIGHT off the bathroom where I could actually hear everything she was doing even when I couldn't see it *defensive rant over*) and I see that child that might not have been.

Since we didn't actually discuss the options and what we might do if the ultrasound came back with negative news, I can gloss over it all. I never had to hear the words come out of Tom's mouth.

But I want to say right here that I will never be so grateful for a doctor telling us exactly what we wanted to hear as I am to that perinatologist who performed that ultrasound. He told us she was beautiful. He told us she was perfect. He told us she had a wonderful brain (he said that three times.) He told us that he wished OB/GYNs would stop giving that triple screen to women my age (I was 35 turning 36 when I was pregnant with Olivia) because it gave so many false positives to women carrying female fetus'.

And he told us she was a little sister.

And she is. A little sister, that is. She adores her big sister. She loves making her big sister laugh, she loves making her big sister scream in frustration. She loves being sweet and she loves being annoying.

And I love it all, even when I'm mopping up a gallon of water off the bathroom floor or when I'm picking up the third turd of the day off the same bathroom floor after it's fallen out of her underwear because she can't be bothered to get off the floor to use the toilet to poop.

I don't actually think that peri missed anything. There wasn't anything there for him to miss. You can't guage muscle tone during an ultrasound and Olivia doesn't have any of the other soft markers of her syndrome. Heck, two others doctors 'missed' the signs a year plus after she was born. But I'll still forever be grateful to that doctor for seeing what we see now.

A perfect little girl, with so much to give and take from this world. I would never take the choice from someone else, but I'm so very, very grateful that I didn't face making a choice. Or that I didn't have someone else wanting me to make a choice. For me, there wasn't a choice so I'm glad there didn't have to be a discussion, so very, very grateful.