Finding Out Autumn Has Osteogenesis Imperfecta
When I first found out I was pregnant with baby Autumn, my boyfriend and I were so excited. We planned out my whole pregnancy. I planned on having her vaginally, she was going to be breastfed and I was going to work until I couldn’t work anymore. However, all that changed once we started having ultrasounds. During our first few ultrasounds the doctors would tell us “your baby legs aren’t growing at the same speed and that one leg was longer than the other.” They immediately thought that she would be a dwarf but we didn’t believe. A few ultrasounds after that we then found out that our beautiful baby girl had a few fractures in her legs. When her dad and I heard that, it broke our hearts. The doctor stated that “your baby may be born with a disease known as Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). It’s a disease in which the bones are very weak. They wanted to test my fluid while I was pregnant but I didn’t want them to do it because they said there was a chance in which I could miscarriage and we didn’t want to take that risk. I told my boyfriend that we will just have to wait and see if what the doctors are saying is true once she was born. As soon as we left the doctors I broke down and cried. I couldn’t fight back the tears because I was so hurt. What did I do to fracture my daughters leg? In all honesty I didn’t do anything.
While Autumn was in the womb she could stretch a certain way and could easily fracture. Months went by and then we finally had our precious bundle of joy on August 27th, 2017 via c-section. Our baby girl was born 7 pounds 5 ounces with fractures in the ribs, both arms and legs but they all were healing. Outside of the womb, she has had two arm and two leg fractures. As time goes by she’s growing and learning so much. I'm proud to say that we have such a loving, beautiful, smart, warrior around who is only 17 months old. What the future has in store for her? We don’t know, but we can’t wait to see what amazing things she will learn and accomplish.
