The Beginning Of Our Journey

The Beginning of Our Journey My wife had attended the twenty week scan without me, due to work commitments I had been unable to attend but I had been waiting for the phone call to to tell me how she had got on. I remember the phone ringing but when I answered I could tell that something was wrong. She had noticed that the scanning nurse looked concerned and had asked a doctor to come in annd have a second opinion.They had taken her to a side room where the gave the news. They had informed her that the scan had shown that our child had a suspected cleft. I came off the phone and felt numb, I had only ever seen pictures and certainly never imagined that my child would have one. I got home from work to find my wife upset and holding on to some leaflets she had been given by the hospital.I couldn't look at them. I took myself away and sat on the end of the bed with them beside me. It was probably one of the worst feelings I can describe as I flicked through the pages looking at these children with varied gaps of all shapes and sizes, some wide, some taller. I didn't know what to say to her, all the time in the back of my mind I questioned my feelings for when the baby was born, would I feel the same, how would we cope. The next day we were contacted by Birmingham Children Hospitals cleft team. They arranged a time with my wife and we waited for the nurse to come to our home. A lovely nurse visited us and with a soothing tone reassured us that support would be there, she showed us photographs of other children, both before and after the operations. Still the thought was there in the back of my mind, I felt shallow and ashamed. I couldn't tell my wife how I felt and to be honest I shut down, didn't talk about it and put on a brave face. It ate away at me over the next few months, we had more scans, more visits from our nurse. They arranged for us to go to a bonding scan, a 4d scan that would show us our child's face and to give us an idea of what to expect. My wife was physically sick on the way, a mixture of nerves and morning sickness. I remember holding back the tears as they showed us the pictures. Every possible thought ran through my mind. On the way home we hardly spoke. The following few weeks seemed to fly by, the hospital and midwifes had made arrangements for the delivery but on the 17th of December at 3.06 am our baby was born. As the midwife delivered him and turned him over my heart went into over drive, but as I saw his beautiful big eyes and his full head of hair the cleft seemed to disappear from my thoughts. I had a gorgeous son and that was all that mattered.