So what you need to know about Arty is that he is an extremely kind-hearted, loving and affectionate man. During my pregnancy, he was so focused on caring for me and tending to my every need - I'm unable to put into words how well he took care of me, and in turn, the baby. He doesn't usually have too much to say, but he is the type of person who thinks about things A LOT before talking about them. After our visit with the G.C., he finally opened up about what he'd been thinking.
I've only seen Arty cry once before, and that was after the death of his beloved grandmother (with whom he lived with his mother before we got married). So, when I was out in the living room and heard him sob from our home office, I ran in there to find him with tears streaming down his face. The sight of him in such pain broke my heart, and we wept together for a long time.
When he could finally speak, he told me more about his cousin, G., who had passed away, and the devastation his death brought to the family. It turned out that when G. was born, his father was unable to deal with him having Down Syndrome, as well as the heart defects he had. G's father left the family. I'm not sure how many heart surgeries G. had in his very short life, but his illness and death took a toll on the family. Arty's Aunt never really got over losing G, and it was a sorrow Arty grew up knowing very well.
Arty went on to explain that if our baby's heart defect was serious, he wanted to be sure she didn't suffer. He would rather we suffer through terminating the pregnancy than to ever see our baby girl weak and in pain. I truly understood his reasoning, but I felt we needed to know more about her heart before I could even try to think in those terms. We had an appointment set up in one week for Dr. K and his U.T. to perform another ultrasound, this time focusing on the heart - by performing a fetal echocardiogram. It seemed we had more waiting to do.
As the week went by, Arty expressed a fear he had that had nothing to do with the baby having DS, or a possible heart defect. He was worried that he wouldn't be a good daddy, because he didn't know HOW to be a father, since his father wasn't around to show him. (Arty's dad had passed away of lung cancer when Arty was 4. He has very limited memories of what it was like to have a father, and has very few pictures of him with his father.)
I asked him, "Do you love our baby already?" I knew he did, and he replied that, of course he did. "Then you are already a good daddy, and when she is born you won't know how or why you know - you'll just know how to do things right for her."
I don't know if he believed me that day - but I believed in him. (And I continue to do so every day.)
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