The Beginning...

We were well on our way down the road to "Happily Ever After" as cliche as that sounds...sure we've had our ups and downs, but generally over the past 13 years Brian and I have had it pretty easy together going from best friends, to happily engaged couple, and then eventually settling into a comfortable married life.
We bought our first house together last year and even that was a breeze, it was the very first one we looked at! When we decided that maybe it was time to have a baby this year, 2 months later one was on the way. Generally speaking, we've had the world in the palm of our hands and sometimes I'm sure we didn't really appreciate it as much as we could have or should have.
My pregnancy started off completely uneventful less the all day "hangover" feeling that I had from weeks 4-12, but even that went away at the end of week 12...pretty much textbook. My OB office left something to be desired, but oh well. Our first ultrasound at 10 weeks showed a perferct normal healthy baby doing sumersaults that looked a little exhausting to me, but the point was, there was nothing amiss.
Already, at this point I had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach that something wasn't going to go right with this pregnancy. It was something that I laid awake thinking about endlessly those first 12 weeks, something that I don't even know if I could explain to Brian if I had tried to put it all into words. Everything had just been too easy up to that point and we were happily anticipating the future and all that this new baby would bring to our lives as we left the world of DINKs and entered family life.
Weeks went by and by week 13 I was feeling good, able to do whatever I wanted without feeling the seasick/hungover feeling anymore. Things progressed at a good pace, my clothes stopped fitting around this time and I had to get maternity clothes which I thought was a real drag. In fact, my new favorite phrase about pregnancy became "Overrated - I don't know how women continue to do this to themselves over and over again". I would openly acknowledge that I by no means was having an even remotely difficult pregnancy, it just wasn't something I was enjoying much for whatever reason.
I was however looking forward to our 20 week ultrasound to see the baby and our biggest concern was did we want to find out the gender or leave it to be a delivery surprise. The ultrasound technician starts the scan and all looks well, baby is still moving nicely, 10 fingers, 10 toes, all the typical stuff that you're supposed to see. Now did we want to know the gender - yes...please tell us the gender (I'm thinking in my head if I know the gender and this baby has a name - then maybe I will be able to bond with he/she more now that they have their own identity). It's a girl!!! She will be Olivia Giuliana (a name that I have had since I was about 17 years old). We are giddy and then she asks us if I had my OB appointment to follow, which we don't so then she takes us into an extra office to wait for someone while we continue to talk all about the things Olivia is going to go in the future.
The nurse/midwife walks in and sits down with us carefully explaining that the Ultrasound Technician thinks Olivia might have exhibited signs of an irregular heartbeat during the ultrasound so they want to send us to a Perinatologist for a level 2 scan and make sure nothing is going on that shouldn't be. We smile, take the order for the scan and walk out not giving it much of a second thought. As we were leaving I see the Ultrasound Technician at the front desk and I knew. I knew that she was not giving me a look of a mother of a healthy baby, that something had come up on that ultrasound that was going to change our lives forever.