Well, well, well...... You will all have to put up with my bad English and poor spelling if you wish to keep up to date with the happenings of Our delightful Claire. Our intent is to post all kind of "diary" type info here, (two to three times a week)that we would like to share. If you find something interesting in this blog, and would like more details, please do not hesitate to call us. We are only using this technology as a way to bring you up to date, without having to tell our story 8 to 10 times a day.

The official "kick off" of this blog is going to be the day we actually bring Claire home from the hospital. We understand, and want you to understand, that this is already a long shot. The projected life of children diagnosed with Trisomy 18 is usually hours to days. Until then, we will post periodically just to let you know our thoughts and feelings as Claire's arrival approaches.

Just to get you up to date from the beginning: We first learned something may be wrong with Claire when we got the results back from a blood test done early during our pregnancy. It told us the odds of our baby having trisomy 18 was 10:1 (it usually comes back something like 3000:1). We were given the option of terminating (aborting) the baby at this point, but for us, that was just not an option. Although we prayed and held out all hope that our little Claire would still turn out perfect, we knew that if something was wrong, God would have some master plan that we may not understand, but will indeed have some purpose. Well, as time went on, more and more test came back that still indicated possibly Trisomy 18. The physicians wanted us to do an amniocentesis early on, but since this can increase the possibility of causing early labor, and even miscarrying, we decided against it. We felt like regardless of the results of the test, there was just nothing that could be done to correct the problem.

We continued to pray, and unfortunately we continued to get back bad results. Next we found out that Claire has a very bad heart condition call a ventricular septum defect (VSD), and possibly worse, something called Tetrology of Felot. We also found that Claire has her little fists clinched up very tight and in a very awkward position, which is also seen with Trisomy 18.

We finally gave in and had a amniocentesis done, which came back 99.9% sure she indeed has trisomy 18. That is still OK, we continue to pray for healing, or understanding as to why or what God's purpose is in this matter. We, or You, will indeed learn something from this, and will be much better off at some point.