Help Please
autumnc17
member
Hi, I'm new here...just found out on Monday at 11 weeks that there was no heartbeat and baby only measured 9 weeks. I had a D&C yesterday, and I didn't know until after it was over last night that I could have asked them to tell me the baby's sex, if it was far enough along to determine. I really wish someone had talked to me about that before the procedure. I know that they sent everything to pathology, so I called the surgery center to ask them if it was too late to find out. They told me to call my dr who performed the D&C. I haven't heard back from her yet and am very anxious that it will be too late by the time she gets back to me, or maybe it already is too late. I'm thinking about trying to call the pathology lab myself, but I don't know if I'm allowed to do that, or even how to find their number. I would really like to know the sex so I can name the baby. Has anyone been in this situation? If you don't know the sex for sure, do you just go with what you think it was and still name it? 9 weeks should be far enough to tell, right? Any responses are appreciated. Thank you for reading. I'm so sorry to all of you who are also experiencing a loss...so hard and sad.
Re: Help Please
If everything was sent to pathology for testing for chromosome abnormalities, then the sex is determined during the microarray analysis. As a heads up, requesting this sort of test outside of medical necessity will be very expensive if your insurance won't cover it (after my mc I had an insurance problem and received a $5k+ bill before it got resolved). I don't think external structures are really differentiated enough to tell the sex by looking at this stage, but I didn't ask my dr about that.
Pathology labs can't usually perform any testing without an order from your doctor or the doctor in charge of pathology, so calling the lab directly will probably not accomplish anything. I would stick with calling your dr's office, maybe try again in a little bit today.
As far as naming the baby if you don't find out the sex, I think that's an intensely personal decision. I found out from my tests that my gut instinct about my baby boy was right, but I would've thought of this baby as a boy if I never really knew. To be honest, I never named him beyond the little nickname DH and I used for the 13 weeks we knew him. That was my own decision for my own path towards healing emotionally though. Go with what your gut says you need to do.
Finding out out the sex was very emotionally difficult (what part of this horrible process isn't?), so just keep that in mind if you decide to go through with testing. I'm glad I did it but it was tough.
if you don't find out the sex, you could pick a gender neutral name if you wanted.
When you've been married this long, you need a ticker to remind you.
Baby Boy M - 08/01/2013
Expecting Baby Bean February 2017