5. Davin George
Three weeks later at our next appointment we had one of the kindest ultrasound techs. She spent so much time with us, and printed out pictures and gave us the entire ultrasound on a disk to take home. She explained everything, and was so compassionate. She told us that our little baby hadn’t grown that much since our last ultrasound 3 weeks prior. It was hard to hear, but he was still alive, his little heart was beating perfectly. At the end of the ultrasound she asked if we had a name picked out. We told her that we had decided that his name was going to be Davin, which is the French variation of David meaning beloved, or dearly loved. Because he was and is dearly loved, our precious little baby boy. I was so impressed with her, that although there was something severely wrong with my baby, and we knew he was not going to survive, she treated him as she would have treated any other normal, healthy baby. I am so grateful to her for that. The same thing happened when we spoke with the doctor and the genetic counselor again. They called him Davin, and every time they spoke of him they called him by his name. Instead of saying ‘your baby’ or ‘the baby’ when referring to him, they treated him like a real, normal person, which he was. That meant so much to me, because not calling him Davin makes it easier to distance yourself from him. Easier to make tough decisions that they talked with us about like ending the pregnancy. When we asked them how often they see babies like Davin, she said maybe once a year. When we asked them what to expect and how to plan for Davin’s birth, they were not really able to give us many answers. They could not guarantee we would make it to full term, they could not guarantee Davin would be born alive, therefore they could not give us much information. Our physician told us that many people in our situation decide to terminate their pregnancy, and so they do not really see many babies born with what Davin has. So while we didn’t really know what to expect from the next few months, we were trusting God that he would take control of the situation and give us the strength to keep caring for this precious little gift that He had given us. We tried to plan the best we could, and just take everything day by day.
