Monday, March 26, 2012

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The other night I was getting ready for bed and I had a strange thought that I should research what might have caused us to lose Molly and Kellen. I have researched it many times before, and normally I come up short. Doctors were able to give us a vague explanation of what they believed happened, but really beyond the doodles they drew for us it was a guessing game. We didn't have statistics, or tests, or facts.

But, then I went to google and went to searching. It didn't take long this time and I found the blog of a girl that looked as though she had my exact story, just if you mixed Molly and Kellen. She lost one baby to an umbilical cord/placenta condition. Her baby was beautiful and perfect until 37 weeks, just a few weeks before her due date, Just like Molly. Then suddenly her baby was gone without warning; she was stillborn, like Kellen. Then the doctors did tests and found that her baby's umbilical cord was attached at the edge and loosely in the membranes, rather than deep and snug and safe in the thick of the plecenta. It's my story. It was so familiar.

This girl had links to other stories and they all sounded a bit like mine. She called the condition she lost her baby to Velamentous Insertion.

I began to research that name and found a few things out.

First, I am 95% sure this is what happened to my babies.

Second, it is not genetic. Which should make me happy except that...

third, according to the studies I found, it has never happened to the same woman twice.
NO RECORDED CASES. Except for me.

 So if this is in fact what Molly and Kellen had, then where do I go with that? If it is not genetic then why both of my babies?! Is there some outlying factor that nobody knows about?

So the big and good news is that I'm VERY sure that Molly and Kellen had VELAMENTOUS INSERTION. And now my goal is to try my hardest to find a doctor who knows anything about it. I want them to find out what is causing this. Why the wheel spun and chance picked tragedy twice for me.

So I want to ask a favor, if I can. If you can help me to find ANYONE who knows anything about this condition, or has a story like mine, or would know a specialist we could talk to, please let me know. Ask your doctors if they know anything. Please and thank you and five thousand hugs to you for your help.

In the meantime, Lucas and I feel confident that while a day will come that we will try to have  biological children, we both feel strongly that adoption is the path we are meant to take right now. We feel that there is a baby out there or that is on it's way that needs to come to our family. We have already seen miracles helping us on our way towards adopting.

So now we keep praying for miracles for adoption, and for answers about this condition.
Fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed for good luck!

3 comments:

Christie said...

From what I've read You want to see a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist -

http://www.memorialhealthsystem.com/wps/wcm/connect/MHS/MH/2Home/Maternal-Fetal+Medicine

Hope this helps :)

Rob and Em said...

Hi amber! My sister and I were just talking as I was reading your blog, and she mentioned her friend that had a similar experience with her son, about the same age as Molly. We can't remember the specifics of her, but we felt like we should tell you about her. You can find her blog by my list of friends on my blog. Her last name is Hanks. I don't know If she had the same thing, but we just thought you could look into it. She is a super cute girl. Good luck and let us know if we can do anything. :)

Luca and Ivan's Mom said...

Amber,
I passed your info by a ob/gyn I work on as a client and she sent me some info. I don't know your email address but email me and I will sent it to you. klwspears@yahoo.com.
hope it helps.
Karissa (Ray and Georgettes daughter)