Are these cakes cute or crass?

Via Buzzfeed via Cake Wrecks

A reader to the New York Times Motherlode blog, Amanda Goehring, wrote a thoughtful letter to blogger Lisa Belkin about the bond she formed with her unborn daughter. Or rather, the daughter she thought she was having. Times blogger Belkin shared Goehring’s response in its entirety, in which she talks about her despair once she realised — courtesy of an ultrasound a few weeks before her due date — that the little girl named Lucille she believed to be growing inside her was actually a boy.

“I cried all the way home. I cried for two weeks. I tried to will the baby I was carrying to be a girl, to be Lucille. But he had never been Lucille. I realised, to my disorientation, that I had never known my unborn child, hadn’t known the first thing about him. There was a stranger inside of me, a stranger with a penis.”

Now, some people might read that and think she sounds a little melodramatic. But I understand what it feels like to imagine the lives we might lead with our kids even before they start. Like Goehring, I also thought I was having a girl during my first pregnancy. But unlike Goehring — who was told during her 20-week sonogram that her child was definitely female — that notion was quickly proven false early on, so I didn’t spend months looking forward to the fun “girl” things I would do with my daughter once she showed up on planet Earth.

After reading this post and reflecting on my own pregnancy behavior, I initially wondered if it’s healthy for potential parents to spend too much time fantasising about what our relationships with our children might be like — the flouncy gingham dresses they might wear, or the football games they might play in. Gender expectations aside, are we already imposing certain expectations on our children by doing this, before they even have a chance to be born and report for life duty?

After thinking about it more, though, I realized it’s inevitable. Every parent who is expecting a child — carrying one, about to adopt one or anticipating one from a surrogate — can’t help but do a little excited, advance planning. You can’t wait to sit down and watch “The Wizard of Oz” with them one day. You know, for certain, that you’ll want to expose him to music and that, as a result, he’ll become a world renowned pianist.

Of course, none of us know. And all the pre-birth stuff is just a little game we play, one that — in cases like Goehring’s — can sometimes lead to temporary heartbreak when we realize our child is not at all what we imagined. But it’s human nature. We can’t help it.

Envisioning how wonderful our babies will be is the great, pre-parental hope. And finding out how wonderfully different they are than everything we ever dreamed? Well, that’s one of life’s most joyous surprises.

Brazilian inventor, Jorge Lopes, figured out a way to use 3-D printing technology to create models from 3-D ultrasound images. The purpose, initially, was for archeological digs. But dinosaur bones? How can you make a fortune from dinosaur bones? You don’t.

But you can make a fortune preying on pregnant women’s fears, hopes and dreams.

Dr. Stuart Campbell at Kings College London, a pioneer in ultrasound diagnosis, is totally jazzed by the fake-real babies. He says they’re a great educational tool and that they’ll help moms who are having trouble bonding with their babies.

Huh?

I’ll grant that they’re educational, since they can be made from any foetus, any size, any point in the pregnancy. But wouldn’t a standard set of plastic models serve the same purpose for a lot less money?

And trouble bonding? Before the baby is even born? It’s not OK to not feel bonded to a 13-week-old foetus? Or even a 24-weeker? Aren’t we at a point in our understanding of pregnancy, birth, parenthood, baby-loving that we know there’s nothing wrong with not bonding with a baby in-utero. There’s barely anything wrong with not bonding in the first couple of weeks post birth.

Plus, before we go selling more crap to help us bond, can we define bonding? It’s a bit of a blanket term.

Anyway, is the possibility of seeing your unborn baby’s face cool? Yes. Is it necessary? Hell no. Will it be expensive. Sure. It will be.

Yes, something like this would be great for pregnant women who are blind — unable to see their babies during ultrasounds. But ultrasound pictures aren’t even necessary. They’re just fun. Which is what a series of plaster dolls of your unborn baby are too. Don’t sell this as the greatest thing since amniocentesis and Spanx maternity. Don’t add this as another freaking expense of pregnancy.

Above all, don’t set up pregnant women for yet another way to fail in pregnancy and impending motherhood. Surely it’s OK to look deeply into a perfectly formed pair of stark white eyes with no irises and feel nothing.

“The results from your blood test screening — all normal?” he asked.

“We didn’t have the blood screening,” I said.

He looked at me in disbelief. “You didn’t have the test?”

When I was pregnant with our first child, John and I talked with my obstetrician about our options for genetic testing and screening. For a woman of thirty-two, like me, the risks of amniocentesis outweighed the chances it would detect a problem. I had conceived after a year of infertility treatments; I didn’t want another needle. And John and I had always felt that abortion wouldn’t be a consideration for us, anyway.

The other test, the one the radiologist asked about, was a simple blood test. It was not risky or invasive, but still just a screening test — it only provided a bit of statistical information about the likelihood of certain genetic abnormalities. The margin of error was high — it might miss a genetic defect completely, or provide a false positive for one that didn’t exist. John and I didn’t want inaccurate information to increase our anxiety or leave us feeling pressured to have an amniocentesis, and with my doctor’s support, we opted out of both tests. Our son Brennan was born healthy and strong. With this second pregnancy, I was thirty-three, still in a low-risk category for genetic abnormalities. We made the same decision.

The radiologist stared intently at the monitor. He rolled me onto my side and clicked tiny arrows on the screen, trying to get a particular measurement.

John and I had made the mistake of bringing one-year-old Brennan with us to the ultrasound. We’d expected the appointment and my follow-up with the obstetrician to be routine. We would learn the baby’s sex, and then have lunch and celebrate before John went back to work for the afternoon. By this point in the exam, Brennan was shouting emphatic protests and attempting to swing from the thin blue curtain that divided the room.

“Take him out,” I whispered to John.

“No way,” John said softly, holding my eyes with his before he looked again at the hazy image on the screen.

The radiologist said he wanted to have another doctor take a look. He stepped out and returned with a woman who squirted more warm gel on my abdomen and swept the sensor over me. They scrunched their faces close to the screen, manoeuvred and pressed my belly, and talked about me as though I weren’t in the room. Fingers clicked a keyboard. “I got the same thing you got,” the woman said cryptically. “Did she have the blood serum screening?”

“She didn’t have it,” he said.

“She didn’t have it?” she asked, her tone sharp. A minute later, she left.

I cleared my throat. “Just what is it we’re looking at?”

The radiologist looked at me, startled, as though he’d forgotten I was there. He offered a rapid-fire description of the flash of light on the screen and its implications. He told us that we were seeing an echogenic intracardiac focus, or EIF. It is a marker for Down syndrome, he said, though a notably unreliable one. He and the second radiologist had been struggling to get an accurate measurement of the baby’s nose, which, if short, would be another marker. That measurement, though, appeared normal.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked him.

“Uh, girl, I think,” he looked at his screen again. “Yeah, a girl. Ninety-percent sure.” He finally met my eyes. “You’re taking this very well,” he said. “Most people get very upset by now.” He handed me a one-page printout on which he had scrawled at the top, EIF, and then he left.

I asked John to take Brennan out, and I shakily pulled my clothes on, desperate to get away from there. I had felt the tears coming, and panic, but Brennan’s presence in the room and, in some strange way, the radiologist’s ineptitude at handling the situation, had helped me to remain calm. Now I just wanted to get across the street and talk to my own doctor.

John and I looked at each other wide-eyed when we got outside. “What an ass,” I said. “Could he have handled that worse?”

“Let’s just talk to Dr. Shapiro,” John said.

Dr. Shapiro greeted us enthusiastically. My hand shook as I handed him the printout. He studied it and let out an exasperated breath. “What is this?” he pointed at the EIF scrawled across the top. “What’s that supposed to tell you? ‘My kid is an elf?’”

I laughed and my eyes filled with tears as I felt a release of the tension that seemed to have been pressing at me from the inside out.

Dr. Shapiro sat with us for a long time, asking and answering questions as we weighed whether to have an amniocentesis that would tell us for certain if the baby had Down syndrome. We talked again about the statistics: the risks associated with an amnio and the likelihood of Down’s. The numbers felt simultaneously meaningless and terrifying. One in two hundred means nothing, or everything, depending on whether you are that one. But while I had walked out of that ultrasound appointment afraid, I felt more fiercely protective of my pregnancy than ever.

“No one’s saying what we’re talking about here,” John said, finally, and I heard the stress in his voice.

“I’m saying it,” Dr. Shapiro said. He leaned against a counter, completely at ease, with the demeanor of a friend. He looked at me. “If you had a diagnosis of Down syndrome would you continue the pregnancy?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. John nodded, his eyes betraying the same certainty and fear I felt.

Dr. Shapiro nodded, and smiled. “Okay,” he said. He went on to say that some people have an amniocentesis in our situation because they wouldn’t want to continue the pregnancy. (Eighty to ninety percent of pregnant women abort when a diagnosis of Down syndrome is confirmed.) But others would have the test because they simply needed to know, to prepare themselves ahead of time rather than find out in the delivery room.

“Do you need to know?” I asked Dr. Shapiro. “Would a diagnosis of Down syndrome change my prenatal care?” He thought for a minute and then described what might be different. He might recommend more ultrasounds to check on the baby’s development. He said with Down syndrome there’s a higher likelihood that the baby would experience distress during delivery, so they would take that into consideration when planning, for example, whether to induce labour. He also told me that there’s a higher likelihood, with Down syndrome, of miscarriage or stillbirth. But learning the diagnosis ahead of time wouldn’t change that.

The baby probably didn’t have Down syndrome, and if she did, the only reason for us to find out right now was if we needed to know. We didn’t. We declined an amniocentesis and Dr. Shapiro scheduled a follow-up ultrasound. It didn’t feel like an exceptional decision, or a particularly brave one. It just felt right for us.

We told no one about the EIF. We barely spoke of it ourselves, and I managed not to think about it very much. I was consumed with caring for Brennan and working with a realtor to find our first house. When we finally found a place we wanted, in a neighbouring city, I felt a sudden surge of panic: Should I have been researching services for special needs children in one school system versus another?

“If we knew that we were going to have a baby with Down syndrome,” I asked John as we talked about the house, “would it change where we wanted to live?”

John looked back at me for a long moment. “If we have a baby with Down syndrome,” he said, “It will change everything.”

One sleepless night near the end of my pregnancy, I lay in bed with my heart racing, remembering that tiny star from the ultrasound. Were we kidding ourselves, pretending we could just take things as they came? I couldn’t calm myself, though I was desperate to sleep. I tried relaxing by tightening and releasing the muscles of my body one by one, beginning at my toes. I should pray, I thought. I should pray for her. But what did that mean? She was there, fully formed inside of me. I could feel her knees and elbows, her stubborn round head. I didn’t believe in a prayer that would change her genetic makeup; she had Down syndrome, or she didn’t. And so what would I be asking for, a different baby? I’d already chosen to have this one. I finally found peace, and sleep, with the thought, She is who she is. Already, she is who she is, and she is mine.

As we made plans for who would care for Brennan while I was in the hospital, I spoke of the ultrasound again, to my sister Megan. “Listen,” I said at the end of a long phone call. “I need to tell you something.” I told her, because if the baby was born with Down syndrome, I wanted someone to be able to tell our families we had known it was a possibility, and that we had made peace with it.

Liddy came into the world soon after, with myriad complications that did not include Down syndrome. She had a heart murmur caused by a congenital heart defect, swollen kidneys, an elevated white blood cell count (because she and I have conflicting blood types, which left her at risk for anaemia), and a deep dimple at the base of her spine that required ultrasound monitoring and an MRI to rule out other complications. Though these issues required a great deal of monitoring, they would ultimately resolve themselves. But Liddy also has severe gastroesophogeal reflux disease, a condition that made it difficult for her to gain weight in her first years and left her vulnerable to breathing problems.

Because of the reflux, Liddy slept for only forty-five minutes or an hour at a time her first months of life. She couldn’t tolerate the stroller, and her car seat made her more vulnerable to the reflux because it pressed her knees to her tender belly. She had to be kept straight and still for long periods after each feeding, and spent nearly all of her time in our arms. We lived our lives in thirty-minute increments — feeding, holding, soothing — while trying to manage Liddy’s hospital visits and ever-changing prescriptions, and take care of her brother, who was not even two. We’d moved to a new neighbourhood where we hadn’t yet made friends. John worked long hours at a new job and came home to find me completely unravelled at the end of each day. And then we would begin the long night, taking shifts holding Liddy, hoping for a few desperate hours of sleep.

We managed, but barely. We missed our friends. We missed each other. We felt, for a very long time, very much alone.

An amniocentesis would not have predicted Liddy’s complications, or prepared me for the realities of having a sick child. Caring for Liddy challenged my marriage, my family relationships, my friendships and my mental health — my very way of being in the world. John and I were naive. We would learn, through Liddy, the awe-inspiring breadth of medicine’s understanding, as well as the frustration and grief of its limitations — and of our own.

Liddy is now a feisty three-year-old who loves eating vanilla ice cream and wearing a monogrammed, pink-and-white-striped skivvy that’s two sizes too small. She bosses Brennan around and revels in the company of her imaginary cat, Juliet. Liddy still has reflux — she always will — but you would never know it to meet her, and it does not interfere with her eating or sleeping. Everything else has resolved itself. And she’s healthy, with hard-won little rolls of fat at her knees and ankles.

She is who she is, and she is mine.

Dear Ultramum,

Our first thought is: how cool that you’re thinking about integrating the idea of a new baby into your son’s life. Our second thought: wow, those twenty-week ultrasounds sure are long. If it’s the anatomical scan — scheduled at twenty weeks and done in a hospital — the visit can take over an hour (not counting the waiting room portion). There’s the whole laundry list of parts to be measured, not all of which are readily visible from every foetal position. So there may be wait time mid-scan as well as beforehand.

Unless you’ve got one of those newfangled 4D machines, it’s tough for an untrained adult to tell what’s what without expert help, let alone a little kid. So he probably won’t get the alien creep-out, but he may not get the cute sister either. He may just get . . . bored. Really, really bored. And then there might be fidgeting or disciplining, or "no running in the hallways," or "don’t touch that screen." And you’ll be on your back, trying to focus on the close-ups of femurs and heart valves.

We’re not saying this is bound to happen; your kid may be riveted and really enjoy the technology and the doctor and nurses may be lovely and friendly and he’ll come out thinking the hospital is the coolest place on earth. This is entirely possible. But you’ll need to factor in a bunch of variables: his general attention span, early twangs of jealousy about so much attention paid to "the baby," the tolerance of the technician for fidgeting and kid questions, the amount of room and chairs in the ultrasound room . . . the list could go on.

You might consider bringing another person to help out. This way your son can come in for the money shot and then, if he wants to, leave and go have fun taking the elevator or running around the lobby or getting an ice-cream from the cafeteria. A partner could be a great option, as he or she will likely be more involved with the older child’s care as you tend to a newborn. However, you’ll need to be sure your partner’s okay with being away from the action. You may both want to be giving your full attention to the screen, especially if there are any issues that need discussing.

Whoever comes should be a fun person, familiar to your son, and ready to ply him with some distracting books or toys. The idea is to keep the experience as light and loose as possible so he has an easy-going, positive vibe about the hospital. He may be back in that same hallway when you’re in labour or after the baby is born. By making the trip special and focused on his needs and interests, you can start to build a good association with the place. And with being a big brother.

One other option is to take him to a less intensive ultrasound at your midwife or ob/gyn’s office. It might be blurrier, but it will probably be more casual, and certainly shorter. You could bring it up with your care provider at the next visit so you can both decide whether it’s a good idea and, if so, which appointment would be best. The bottom line is that this could be a really great opportunity for your family to share and learn. Just keep thinking about the big picture for your son as well as the little picture of your daughter.

Have a question? Email parentaladvisory@babble.com.au