Happy New Year! Jerad and I are pleased to be putting 2012 behind us (not to discredit the joys of the past year) and start a new year with many new firsts for our family.
After meeting with the genetic counselor, we don’t know much more but I am confident that we are in the right department. After the doctor spent some time talking to us and studying the boys, his educated guess is, for a lack of a professional term….”twining”. Technically the egg and sperm are not suppose to split in half and so on very rare occasions, they don’t split evenly. He thinks the egg just didn’t split evenly and then with the complications with the placenta, Vaughn’s fight onto earth was even harder than we originally imagined. Even more reason to give all of our gratitude to God for bringing us Vaughn! I have to say that this has been a really hard reality for us to face, as parents you just want the best for your kids….. And yet God’s timing always amazes me as the same day we had this appointment, that evening I met up with some friends who have known and loved me since our days of high school and had great wisdom to share with me. They reminded me that twins or not, it is hard not to compare siblings and blessed me with words of encouragement as I stared into each of their comforting eyes. I left that evening feeling confident again in God’s perfect plan for our twins.
The genetic counselor and doctor left us with a couple of decisions. They would like to draw more blood from Vaughn and do some more testing, less generic and more specific to a couple of syndrome’s that could possibly apply. They would also like to do an MRI to take a look at Vaughn’s brain. We had brain ultra sounds done on both Vaughn and Asher in the NICU when they were first born and they didn’t see any brain bleeds at that time but would like to look again now that he is a year old. The reasoning behind wanting to do the MRI is that the counselor and doctor are concerned with how delayed the boys are in their motor development. Would you pray along side us if we should do one or both of these tests? We would have to put Vaughn back under anesthesia to have the MRI done and we DO NOT want to do that again…..and the chance that we would find something out that would change how we care for the boys is slim. Even if we find out he has an extra chromosome or is missing one, we still might not be able to do anything about it. But on the other side, we might find out some information that would help us understand and know more about Vaughn. There is a possibility that some of the tests would also give us an outlook into the future as there is a chance that Jerad and I could be carriers of a genetic code that we could possibly pass on to another baby. At this point in time we feel our family is complete but from past experience we know that God’s desires for us are abundant, so we will discuss this again with the Lord once the boys are much older. J This appointment was for Vaughn but they did ask that we bring Asher with us, as even though Asher isn’t quite as far behind in his motor skills as Vaughn and his eye and ear don’t seem to be effected the same way, the fact remains that they share the exact same DNA…. So whatever Vaughn has, Asher does too. So we don’t need to draw blood or have Asher do the MRI too as the results would be the same. The doctor measured Asher’s left eye and ear and they are a little smaller than the right, it just isn’t as noticeable when looking at him. We have plenty of time to make these decisions as his/their genes don’t change and are not going anywhere so that is a relief! I am thinking we will wait until we are out of helmets to move forward as we feel like we live at Children’s.
We have a weight check next week and a helmet appointment so I will be able to let you know how the boys are growing and hopefully share good news with Vaughn’s first scan. Vaughn’s torticollis isn’t getting better as we were hoping to see some improvement from his helmet so we do have a follow up appointment with our rehab doctor next month.
This is the year of Jubilee for our family and we are going to embrace it! As Jerad and I go into our 7th year of marriage we are going to learn how to rest, take a Sabbath and enjoy Vaughn and Asher. We spent our New Year’s weekend up in Estes Park with some extended family and asked God some questions….What are you going to believe in faith for this year? What does God want to accomplish in our life this year? What is HE saying this year? 2013 is here and we challenge you to ask God those questions and then wait and listen for His voice!
