The Beginning of the Journey

To begin telling our story, I think it's best to paste the first email that we sent out to our very close family and friends, informing them of what had happened and asking them for prayer.

Dated Wednesday, June 29, 2011, here it is in it's entirety:

Hi everyone,

We had an ultrasound of the baby today, and received some very bad news. Baby is missing a part of the brain, called the cerebellum, and possibly more areas. Baby's position today didn't allow for any insight into how much more of the brain is missing. We're being referred to a high risk perinatal clinic and will get more testing done to better understand the extent of baby's condition. This will include more ultrasounds and an MRI.

We're still not sure what this all means, but these upcoming tests and appointments will hopefully give us a lot more answers. However, our obstetrician gave us a very sad prognosis. She said that without the cerebellum, baby won't be able to move. If there is more of the brain missing, baby will most likely not survive very long after birth.

We are completely heartbroken. We are praying for a miracle, and covet your prayers for this also. We serve a powerful, mighty and merciful God, that is very capable of performing miracles. Please also pray for peace for us, as our minds are swirling right now and we are in a lot of shock. Pray also for us to get an appointment at the perinatal clinic really soon, as we were told to expect an appointment in 2 weeks, but we have a lot of questions that we would like answered sooner than that.

Thank you so much.

Andrea and Justin