Our Son, Noah Gabriel Wall

It is with great joy and sorrow that we announce
the birth and passing of our dear son, Noah Gabriel.
He was born Friday, December 12, 2008 at 4:35am
He passed away about an hour and a half before he was born.

Noah weighed 7lbs 14.6oz

and was 19" long!

Noah Hello Goodbye(Song)

Wheres the navigator of your destiny?

Where is the dealer of this hand?

Who can explain life and its brevity

cause there is nothing here that I can understand

You and I have barely met

And I just don't want to let go of you yet

Chorus:

Noah, hello, goodbye

I will see you on the other side

Noah, sweet child of mine

I will see you on the other side

And so I hold your tiny hand in mine

For the hardest thing Ive ever had to face

Heaven calls for you before it calls for me

When you get there, save me a place

A place where I can share your smile

And I can hold you for more than just a while

He gives and takes away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, Blessed be your name.

Birth story to come once Mommy is feeling better.

Something i saw online. (Letter from baby)

Dear Mom and Dad,

I wish that I could have said "good bye". It sometimes seems unfair that I was never able to say "hello". I'm OK now; everything is better. I miss you and always will, but I believe we will be together again, in time for all time. Right now, though, that seems likely an eternity. In time it will be for an eternity. Please, remember me, use my name, tell my family and your friends about me. Never forget me or pretend I didn't exist. Thanks for all you done for me. Mom, thanks for putting up with all of the changes in your body; thanks for everything you shared with me. Thanks for talking to me; I know your hopes and dreams for me. Thanks for the songs you sang, and for those gentle pats you gave me while I was floating inside you. You may not realize it, but the rhythmic contracting helped me rest peacefully and reassured me. As I grew I could feel your heart beating better and better, and it gave me such a wonderful sense of comfort. Thanks for tears you shed for me. I know you did everything you could for me and I am fortunate to have you for my Mother. I am sorry for the sadness and sorrow you have suffered. Dad, thanks for being there for Mom and me, it must have been so hard for you, trying to be so strong and brave for Mom, when you were confused, upset and afraid yourself. I will miss growing up with you, wrestling, being tossed in the air, just sitting on your lap learning how to use the TV remote control. Please don't ever forget about me. I will never forget about you. If there is something that I have learned, is that you will not find the answer to the 'why' of all of this, not now anyway. God did not make this happen, but He will help you live, love and laugh again. Sometimes that can seem very difficult when you hurt and want so badly answers. I want you to live today; be happy. Bring laughter back into the house. Dare to dream again. You know so much better than many that life is often so short and unpredictable. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. I would rather this be all a very bad nightmare, but I can't do nothing to change that now. However, you can make something good out of my death if you use it for an opportunity to love each other a little bit more, and reach out. There are so many hurting people out there who need a hand, or a hug or a 'hello' or just someone to listen. Don't be afraid to admit that you may be one of them. Be gentle with each other. On a clear, still night, look for me out there in the peace and quiet. Look up, not by the Big Dipper or the Milky Way, but over there in the corner of the sky. See that small, twinkling you never noticed before? One more thing before I go, thanks a lot for everything you did for me. Thanks for caring and sharing. Thanks for trying and crying. I love you lots. And Mom and Dad, "good bye", "good bye for just a little longer."

Love you

Getting Closer

It has been a very busy month for Hank and I! We went to Thief River Falls over Thanksgiving weekend, we stayed at a place called 7 Clans Casino. It was a lot of fun other than the fact that i could not go down the water slides!! After Thanksgiving I also started working for Hank at his shop every mon-fri 10-6 That has been something to get used to! and I find myself tired all the time! The next weekend we left for Alberta at 4 in the morning friday and drove straight through to Lethbridge which is i think 13-14 hours. From the minute we got there we were busy till the min we left! The ride home we also drove straight through. I have really noticed how much that took out of me in the last 2 weeks! I was very thankful that i did not have any problems or go into labor early on either of the trips so our prayers were answered!!!

I have had a few appointments since i last posted one of them was with a new Dr. since mine is on vacation for a month. She was so good to us she had us in her office for 1 hour while she explained everything about going into labour and what to expect. Usually my appointments were only in and out. The next specialist appointment we had was a week after this one and we once again for the 5th time got to see Noah! They found out at this Ultrasound that he is now bum breech were as before he was feet first. They found some amnio fluid this time! not lots but it is better than none! His Tummy is still big they are saying that at 35 weeks his kidneys are the size of a full term baby. They also told me that they Had heard from my New Dr already! He was saying that there was finally some communication going on! They Had said that they will not induce me untill 1.5 weeks after my due date unless there are complications. so that means i have another 4-5 weeks to go if i make it full term!

I can't believe that i am almost 36 weeks already I guess for most couples time starts passing really slowly at this point because they are waiting for their healthy baby. But for us the time is passing much to quickly we are not ready for all the things that will go on after he is born, we are not ready and never will be ready to let him go...... I am starting to get so nervous, scared, sad, almost every emotion there is i think we are feeling at this point. It is starting to get really hard to see pregnant women and new babies and i see them all the time!! But with all the friends and there support and prayer support i know that we will make it through this storm! Thanks to everyone who has been Praying for us it is so much appreciated!!

Our 4th ultrasound

Today we went to our fourth ultrasound! we were very excited to see Noah again! we got there and this time we only had to wait 5 min! we found out that instead of having very low fluid i now have none at all. Noah is still breech and she said that because there is no fluid that he would stay that way cause he won't be able to move that much. We got to see his face this time! I had asked her if everything looked normal on his face (because that is what i am most nervous about is what he will look like.) and she said every thing was fine! he had such a cute little face! it was still snuggled in the placenta so we couldn't see it to clearly but we saw it! As soon as i get the face pictures on cd i will post them!

Dr Reed came in again to take a look and answer some questions. I had to ask him some questions for my Dr about delivery and such. He was quite suprised that she had not contacted him yet cause he sent her all of his information along with info about MG. He asked us yet again if we were sure that we still wanted to be at boundry trails for the delivery. We told him that we would like to if it were possible, it looked like he wanted to say something but in the end he didn't. He also said that to induce me early would be very hard on me because it is my first pregnancy etc, so now it is sounding like they want me to go to full term. I still have mixed feelings about that!! He also said that Noah was in breech position but he was feet first instead of bum first which is really good for delivering (since that is how he is to be delivered.) And usually they are concerned about the head getting stuck but in our case the head is smaller so it shouldn't be a problem and also because of his big tummy it will pave the way for the head!

After we got our appointment for another 4 weeks and left, i started to wonder about delivering in winkler. Out here there are no specialists that have delt with this before so that is very scary for me! but on the other hand it is closer to home! I think that i am starting to lean towards having Noah in WPG because they have delivered babies like this before so they know excatly what to do! and if i can have Dr Reed as my Dr then i would feel very comfortable going out there! So we have a lot of thinking and praying to do about this and i find myself stessing about it. On a positive note just yesterday i think i felt Noah have the hiccups! i am not sure how that is supposed to feel but i have never had that feeling before it was soo neat! so i did research it and it sounds like that is what i felt! I love feeling all the movement!!!

Aug 29/2008 Another appointment in the city

Mom and i went to smitties for breakfast this morning and then went to pick up Hank. We arrived for our appointment just in time! this time we only had to wait for half and hour intead of 2 hours! We had a different lady do our ultrasound today and she was really, really nice! We asked her if we would be able to get some pictures because we weren't able to get any from winkler and she said that wouldn't be a problem. In the end we got about 10 pictures!

With this ultrasound she was able to see more than they did last time. We saw that Noah has 6 little toes on each foot, and when she measured the kidneys she said that they were the size of a 31 week baby(I was 26 weeks at the time) so the stomach is bigger. She also noticed that Noah Has clubbed feet and she said that because of the stomach being bigger and not very much amnio fluid he is a bit squished in there so that is what caused that. ( There is not very much fluid because his kidneys are not working so he is not swallowing it as he should and then also not producing it.) They looked at the heart again, and the heart is still perfect! we saw his little fists and she counted his fingers and from what she could tell there were a normal 5 there!

When she got to the head she couldn't see very well because just like last time he is all snuggled up in the placenta. but she did find that there was a sack on the back of the head and she thinks that is where the brain is, and she also found that there was a covering on top of the head so it won't be open like they first thought. We couldn't believe how much had changed. Oh and at first when she had put the wand on my stomach she pulled it off and asked us if we knew what we were having. We told her yes and then she showed us why she pulled it off. Apparently our little man like to show off his stuff!

Dr Reed came in and also checked out the ultrasound . Then the geneticist came in and told us that they know excactly what is wrong with Noah and it is not anencephaly. He said that the extra toes and the polycistic kidneys and the brain in the pouch on the back of the head ment ne thing. Our little boy has Meckel Gruber. That was quite a shock for us becuse when he told us the chromesomes were fine we though that ment no meckel gruber. And meckel gruber is genetic so hank and i each had the gene. (out of 40,000 genes) wow. that also means that everytime that we get pregnant we have a 1-4 chance of it happening again. they asked us again if we were related because it is so rare for 2 people to have the same gene and again we told them no. That was so depressing to hear.

The day after our ultrasound Hank stayed home from work with me. We didn't really know what to do, we just didn't have the energy. We got a call from winnipeg Health Science at 3 that day telling us that we had an appointment for 1030am tomorrow with the specialist. We couldn't believe how fast that was!

Aug 1/2008- Today we are on our way to the city to find out some more info. We decided that we wanted to know the sex of our baby so we were going to ask them if they would do that for us. We waited in the waiting room for 2 hours before finally getting called in. We had a 45 min ultrasound with the tech, and then Dr Reed came in. At this ultrasound he actually showed us our baby we could watch the whole time on the screen!( in winkler you just lie there looking at the back of the moniter). We asked him if he could tell us if we were having a boy or girl and he said that he would try but the baby wasn't cooperating. He showed us the babys heart, the kidneys the legs and arms, they couldn't get a good look at the head though because the baby was squished into the placenta. But we saw the ear and mouth opening and closing! Then all of a sudden he said "oh i know what you are having" the baby had just spread its legs and we got a really close view! we are having a boy! the name we decided on was Noah Gabriel.

He then took us into his office and said they think that it is Anencephaly but there is a chance because of the kidneys that it might be something called Meckel Gruber. He showed us some textbook pictures and they were pretty scary! but we really didn't think that, that was what it was. He then asked us if we were wanting to "induce" the labour or if we were wanting to carry till full term. Inducing was a really polite word for what they were meaning! but we told them that we were carrying till full term.

We were then sent to the Geneticist and he asked us so many questions! one of them was if we were related! lol. But i guess they have to ask that cause some people are. he explaind to us an amniocentesis and that they would test the babys chromesomes to see if they were ok. but there was a 1 in 200 chance that might cause a miscarrage but we decided that we would do it. That was one of the scariest things i have ever had done to me! but i made it through lol. Once we were done that we were finally able to go home at 4:00.

I got a phone call from the geneticist at work 2 weeks later! when i heard it was him on the phone i was soo scared! but he told us that the babys chromesomes were normal, so that is one thing that we do not have to worry about!

Baby News

This is a recap since i only started blogging now.

April 8, 2008 Hank and I found out that we were going to have a baby! We were very excited. We waited till I was 10 weeks before we told anyone, that was the longest 6 weeks of my life. ( I am not very good at keeping secrets!) Everyone was excited, it was the first grandchild on my side of the family and the second on Hanks side.

I have been having a great pregnancy so far, haven't been sick or anything else, so i don't know why i had a nagging feeling at my Drs appointment. I asked my Dr if everything was going ok and she said that from all the tests and stuff that she had done everything was fine. I went home still feeling uneasy, I even asked my friends if they felt this way right before their ultrasound so i could feel a bit better about it.





July 30/2008 Ultrasound!

Today we are going to see our baby, and i am still feeling uneasy. I even was telling Hank that if there was something wrong at least i knew that i did everything i was suppposed to do to have a healthy pregnancy.

We get to the Hospital and the lady takes me in. ( In our hospital only the mom goes in till the tech is done their stuff.) We made small talk and i had asked her if there was any problems if our Dr would let us know, she said yes they would call. After a while she told me to go empty my bladder cause it was to full and she couldn't see the baby properly. (later on i remembered that i had asked her if my bladder was a good size cause i only drank the water 1/2 hour before i came instead of 1 1/2 hours. and she said that my bladder was the perfect size!) I go to the bathroom and come back into the room and she is not there. So i take a look at the computer screen so i could see my baby, but i had no idea what was what on there!

She comes back into the room ( and grabs some kleenex, i didn't think anything of it.) with a Dr and he said he was going to take a look, buy that time i am so nervous i just know that something is wrong! He askes me a few questions and then looks at me and says " There is something very wrong with your baby, let me go and get your husband." As he says that the nurse hands me the kleenex since i was crying so hard. They asked me what my husbands name was and i could hardly spit it out! On his way back with Hank he tells him that there is something wrong with the babys brain. ( i guess he wanted to warn him a bit cause to walk into a room with me crying would be a bit of a shock). Hank walks in with the Dr and takes my hand, as the Dr tells us that our babys brain didn't develope at all from what they could tell. The skull was missing from the eyebrows up, and our babys kidneys were also enlarged. He told us that it was called Anencephaly and our baby was not compatible with life. The Lady took us through a back door so that we didn't have to walk through all the waiting rooms.

I had to call my work and tell them I would not come in for the next couple of days, cause i was planning to go back after the ultrasound. After that i called my mom at work, and as soon as i heard her on the phone i started to cry harder, i tried to tell her that there was something wrong with the baby and she was supposed to come home. She tells me "Vikki calm down i can't understand you". (my sister when she is sad or excited sounds like i did i guess!) I told her that it was me and explained everything again.

We get to my mom and dads house and i go into the house, my dad was standing there and i ran up to him huged him and started to cry again. He finally askes me what is wrong ( mom hadn't told him yet) I felt bad cause he had no idea what was going on! He said his mind was going miles a min trying to figure it out. Meanwhile mom had a hard time coming home cause she forgot she didn't have a vehical and couldn't get ahold of anyone, so she started to walk till someone from work saw her walking and picked her up. It was a very emotional day for everybody! we spent most of the evening at my parents house then went to Hanks parents for a bit. It still just feels like a dream!