I am pretty sure when someone came up with the phrase “last but not least”, they were preparing to describe this last baby of ours!

Only in my wildest dreams did I ever see myself having four children. It was something I always wanted, but not really something that would be doable for us, financially at least, and with me working outside of the home. But we got lucky, and we were able to add just one more sweet thing to our family, and to show her appreciation, she has been giving us a run for our money from the moment of conception.

I found out I was pregnant in early February, which was about 9 months in the making! We started trying for the last pregnancy shortly after our 3rd child, Warner was born. We figured it would take some time, so we didn’t want to wait too long. Those 9 months felt so long, but these 9 months of pregnancy feel MUCH longer!

If we were blessed with a 4th child, I had my hopes up for a girl, but also was realistic, I know you get what you get with these kinds of things. But there was always a voice in the back of my head, letting me know we would get our girl. That was my mothers voice, one I had heard speak something similar to before she passed away in January of 2021. One of the last things she said to me when she was alert was “I’m gonna send you one more”. At the time, I had two children, and was about 37.5 weeks pregnant with my third, I thought maybe she was just saying weird stuff. I asked her to clarify…… she said “another baby, a girl”. We kind of laughed it off considering I was sitting next to her having gnarly contractions and discomfort due to the current pregnancy. But in the back of my mind, I hoped she was right. And that, my moms forethought, was what let me dream wildly enough to try for baby number four.

So…. Early February 2022….. PREGNANT!!!

Late-March 2022…… Through genetic testing, we find out, it’s a GIRL!!!!

Let the buying begin…. We need all the bows, all the pink, all the floral! In reality I didn’t buy anything yet because the test was only 99.9% accurate and I figured there is still a tiny chance it could be a boy, so I better wait until we see on ultrasound proof of our baby girl! But once that happened, all bets were off.

The beginning of the pregnancy was pretty typical for me, all the nausea and vomiting one could ever want and daily naps just to feel like a functioning person.

All of our ultrasounds went well, all of the checkups went well, I was feeling as good as possible when you have a tiny person taking over your whole being. We made it to the big 20 week anatomy scan, where they confirmed, she is definitely a girl. There was nothing remarkable to note during that scan but they did have some subpar views on some parts. We were scheduled to come back in 4 weeks to get a repeat ultrasound to just double check everything and see if Miss Thing would be more cooperative. So at 24 weeks, we go back, and everything checks out except for one tiny thing, it looks like her kidneys are a bit larger than normal. The normal range I believe was 4-6mm and hers were measuring closer to 7mm. Nothing too alarming, we were told that it could just mean she hadn’t processed urine to her bladder and we caught the measurements during a transitional time so to speak.

At this point, I was still having pretty funky nausea and vomiting, along with finding out my gallbladder was absolute trash. So to be on the safe side, my OB referred me to Maternal Fetal Medicine to get double checked. It felt like that appointment took forever to come around, it was really just 2 weeks later. I wasn’t too concerned after I googled my little heart out, I knew this baby would be just fine!

So 26 weeks pregnant, we go into the MFM office with high hopes and we get great news! Her kidneys are completely normal, bladder looks great as well. As part of their inquiry, they complete an in depth ultrasound and checked our sweet girl from the top of her head all the way down to her little tiny toes. During the ultrasound I didn’t notice the tech spending more time in any certain area, so I felt relieved and I also didn’t see anything that looked odd or out of place compared to my three previous pregnancies. But then she told me to hold on, she was going to get the doctor to let her do a once over, I thought this was odd, but being in a new office, I thought this was just their typical procedure. (Which I did later find out, the doctor always does a once over after the tech, at all of my appointments, so nothing too alarming)

The doctor comes in and scans around and I notice she keeps coming back to her back and at some point froze the screen to an image of her entire spine, which is the first time we ever got such a great a view of it because of her stubbornness in the past. She started to say “so I do see something” and in true Jami fashion I interrupted her and told her it was Spina Bifida. Wanna know what I knew about spina bifida? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!! What made me say that? She confirmed that it did appear that our sweet girl had a small neural tube defect located at her lower spine, but she couldn’t say for sure the severity without doing more testing. I think my husband was in shock and maybe I was too, but I also felt unreasonably calm. I had this overwhelming feeling that everything was going to be okay. The weird thing was, about 6 weeks prior to this I had stumbled upon an article that discussed all of the advances in the treatment of babies with spina bifida, and it mainly focused on fetal surgery while the baby is still in the mothers womb. It talked about how the diagnosis process and treatment process have come such a long way, mentioning that in the past (and unfortunately a bit still today) that doctors would often recommend termination for those babies that presented with a neural tube defect. Uhm, huh?! In 2022 there are still doctors that are suggesting you abort your baby, usually past the 20 week mark, due to an issue with their spine?! Now look, they have a ton of levels of severity with spina bifida, but from what I have read, the majority of these kids leave pretty typical fulfilling lives that require some degree of medical intervention, but sometimes nothing at all. This was obviously not even offered to me, nor would I have been interested in going this route.

That day they did an amniocentesis, which is the only way to determine if the tube defect is “open” or “closed”. Fingers were crossed for closed, because that indicates that the spina cord and nerves are not exposed to amniotic fluid or outside of the body. I also thought before that an amniocentesis would be painful, and I mean it didn’t feel great, but it was the most odd feeling I have ever felt during any procedure. You can feel the needle poking through each layer until it gets to where it needs to be, so weird. But the doctor, ultrasound tech, and nurse who worked together to get it done were absolutely amazing and my husband was there holding my hand the entire time. Before we left the office that day we had a fetal MRI scheduled for about 3 weeks away and were sent home with reassurance that no matter the outcome, things would be okay.

MRI day came and went, nothing too spectacular. It was so dang hot in that machine. Right before that procedure we got the results back from the amniocentesis letting us know that baby girl’s tube defect was in fact CLOSED!!! Yayyyyy!!! The MRI seemed to support that information, but didn’t show anything that would change any of the information we were getting.

After that we went to Our Lady of the Lake and met with a pediatric neurosurgeon, her take on things was basically “wait and see”, that we really wouldn’t know anything for certain until baby was out and she could get her own MRI. By the way, we weren’t candidates for the in-utero surgery because 1. I was too far along by the time we had a diagnosis and 2. Her defect was so mild, the risks of operating were far worse than any benefit to her.

We also met with the NICU team at the hospital where we will be delivering, they were great as well, so reassuring, helpful and informative. They answered any of the questions we could think of and told us some stuff that hadn’t even crossed our minds.

So where are we now?

I am currently 35 weeks pregnant……. Just waiting. Waiting for our sweet girl to decide to join us. I’d love to say I am calm and mellow and just enjoying these last few weeks of pregnancy, but it is just the opposite. I am still sick, itching all over, losing about a pound a week, and dealing with the most outrageous anxiety I have ever had! I try to keep in mind that everything will be okay and our sweet girl was a very prayed over and thoughtful gift from Heaven. I am excited to get to see her sweet face, see how much hair she has, run my fingers across her chubby cheeks, and just really stare at her until I can’t hold my eyes open anymore.

I can also say with 100% certainty, the Orgeron family will be capped at four kiddos. Factory closed. She is our last but not least.

Can’t wait to see you sweet girl…. Everette Jess-Ann Orgeron.