It was the phone call I’d been waiting for. ‘The first test results will come back in a week,’ they’d said, ‘the others can take up to two.’ It had been exactly a week since the pregnancy scan, and I was ready to hear that everything had registered negative so far and that there was nothing wrong with our third baby. Yes, she’d measured small on the 20-week scan, with an echogenic bowel, but all of that could mean nothing – or something very serious.
I was unpacking the food shopping when I answered the call. ‘Is now a good time? Would you like to know the results?’
‘Yes! Yes, I’ve been waiting.’ My children (a four-year-old girl called Martha and a two-year-old boy called Jamie) started squabbling and I pleaded with them to stop it – just for five minutes so I could hear the news.
‘Your baby has a 95 per cent chance of having Edwards’ syndrome,’ the screening coordinator said. ‘It’s so rare, I’ll just have to read the information to you.’ As she explained the devastating impact of having this particular extra chromosome, I started to remember friends of mine in the US who’d had a baby with Edwards’ syndrome. His name was Hudson. He’d lived for eight hours and they’d celebrated every moment they had had with him.
