Ashley's
anencephalic Story

The medical center in Kalamazoo worked it out so that we could come late one afternoon. This way I wouldn’t miss a whole day of work.  I could work in the morning and leave at noon or one o’clock and still make it in time.
I believe that there was several weeks in between going to Kalamazoo because I think that we had to patiently wait some more.  Because it was still early in the pregnancy, there was still plenty of time to get the babies room finished.  Pam and I love to be organized, but we also procrastinate.

Finally the day arrived, we were going to meet my mother-in-law and a her friend afterward and go out to eat and do a little shopping with them.  It was going to be a fun afternoon.  Especially since we were going to find out if we were having twins.
We arrived at the medical center in Kalamazoo.  Eventually after some searching we found where we were supposed to go.  It was a large building with quite a few floors.  We went in and rode the elevator up to the floor for the ultrasound.
Pam had to drink lots of water and she really wasn’t real happy about it.  Evidently, you have to drink water so the ultrasound machine can have a better picture.  The more water you drink the better.

There really wasn’t any kind of a waiting room, so they led us to a couple of chairs outside the ultrasound room.  We were finally here, ready to see if we were going to have two babies instead of one.

After some time, they called us into the ultrasound room.  They had Pam lay down on the exam table.  First, they began by doing an outside ultrasound.  They technician showed us many different things, like the bones, stomach, and the spine.  I couldn’t really tell, but it was fun to be able to actually see our baby.  We were excited but we didn’t see any twins.  We let the technician do her work. We kept quiet most of the time and just let her guide the conversation when she wanted to.  The technician had Pam go to the bathroom every ten minutes, to keep emptying her bladder, which was fine with Pam.

The longer it got, it seemed like she was taking a lot of pictures. It seemed like they just kept coming out.  I think that she must have taken 20 to 30 pictures. However, because we had never had an ultrasound like this before, we just figured this was the usual course of events.  We also noticed that she was fairly silent about the whole thing.  Again, we figured that she had seen many babies and this is what she did.  I squeezed Pam’s hand and rubbed to let her know that I loved her and to ward off the tension mounting in the room.

After probably an hour, she decided to do an inside ultrasound.  She finally got that setup and started taking some more pictures.  It really seemed to be taking quite a long time.  My throat began to get very dry and the room was very still.  You could hear a pin drop.
The technician finally called in the doctor, which we thought was a good sign.  It was almost over and we would find out if what how healthy our baby was.  The technician and the doctor talked for quite some time in hushed tones about the ultrasound and she showed the doctor several of the pictures that she had taken.

Finally, the doctor told us that we were finished and Pam could get dressed.  She said that she would talk to us in the room that was just down the hall.  So Pam got dressed and we went to sit in the room down the hall.  It was a very nice conference room with very comfortable chairs.

We talked a little bit about how unnerving that experience was.  The ultrasound room was very quiet.  There didn’t seem to be any happiness flowing from the doctor or the technician.  We were happy that it was now done and that we could get on with our lives.  We thought that we were just overreacting since we had nothing to compare it to.