Jan 16th was the day our Doctor was able to confirm that our ONE potential BOY was officially a GIRL. So now the Busby Quints are ALL GIRLS… WOWZERS!! After we shared this news with everyone, the first question that people ask is “Are you sad there are no boys?” Well…to explain why we are not sad one bit, I must explain what happened before we found out we are having all girls.
When we first arrived to the appointment my Doctor started to explain to us some issues in my blood work. My blood work came back to show I am Kell Negative, which means I have a Kell Antigen in my blood. There are only two ways you can create a Kell Antigen — either through a blood transfusion or from a previous pregnancy where you carried a child without your own blood type. Since I have never had a blood transfusion, at this point we assume Adam and I have two different blood types and Blayke therefore has Adam’s blood type and not mine. Since we only know what we know at this point, we assume I created this Kell Negative Antigen after having Blayke.
So what does all this mean?????
Well assuming at this point Adam is Kell positive (waiting on his blood results to come back), since I am Kell negative, we face the issue of one or more babies having Adam’s Kell positive blood type (it’s a 50/ 50 chance). If any baby happens to be Kell positive, my body/blood will want to fight against their blood therefore killing their red blood cells and making the baby extremely anemic. At this point my ratio of the Antigen is really low 1:2 so if either of the babies is Kell positive, my antigen may not do anything to them as long as the ratio stays low.
The hard part about this whole blood issue is, we will not be able to determine the blood type of any of the babies in utero. If this was a single or even twin pregnancy, they could do an amniocentesis to figure out the blood type and even do a blood transfusion in utero…. BUT with FIVE babies, it’s just not possible. So the only way we will be able to maybe see any signs of anemia is after 20 weeks via ultrasound. I will start to get my blood drawn every other visit to see if my antigen ratio increases, which in the case it does…it more than likely means it is fighting against something (Kell positive blood). My Doctor will also start at 20 weeks looking for anemic signs in the ultrasounds.
At this point we are in the unknown stage of a lot of this information but assume we will be facing a tough issue. To all of those praying for us, please pray for our babies blood to not be affected by my Kell negative antigen…or pray that they ALL carry my blood type instead of Adam’s so they will not have a chance to be affected.
So … back to the question of if “we are sad there are no boys???” I think you can answer that one…ha. We don’t really care what the gender is….we honestly just want ALL HEALTHY HAPPY BABIES.
We are strong in our faith and trusting God with all the challenges we will face along this journey. God is the creator here and we TRUST IN HIM!
Thank you for following our journey and most of all thank you for your prayers.
xoxo
~D~
