It’s really best if you accept, right from the start, that you are going to screw up. You’re a human, humans make mistakes. Being a parent does not abrogate that.
It’s also pretty certain that you’ll end up doing at least one thing that you swear right now you’ll never do (like let the TV entertain your kid so you can read the last few pages of your book). Whatever it is, all the stuff you say right now “I’m never going to yell at my child in anger”; “I’m never going to let my child go to bed without brushing his teeth just because we’re both exhausted”; etc. etc. etc.
Hey, it’s great to have lofty goals, but your standards are practically bound to slip at some point, at least briefly!
When I was pregnant with my son, I chose to have CVS testing for personal reasons. The test did show a chromosonal abnormality and we had to go in again and have my husband’s and my blood tested as well. You have not seen a freak out like that freak out…until you get to the day ten days later (ten!!!) when the genetic counselor was supposed to call me with the results.
She didn’t call. I called her. She still didn’t call, because, as it turns out, the results were not back yet. Oh, my. My husband ended up calling and upbraiding her. (And my husband is a very nonconfrtontational person, almost to a fault). If you don’t have an answer for a pregnant woman who has been waiting a week and a half to find out if something is seriously wrong with her unborn child, perhaps it’s a good idea to call her and reassure her that you will get the answers to her as soon as possible and that the delay in results does not necessarily portend doom.
Wow. I’m getting worked up just thinking about it. It turned out to be hereditary hemachromatosis and nothing worse, but that was a very scary period.
A friend had amnio which showed a Very Bad Thing (a trisomy, and not Down’s but one of the “hopefully won’t survive long” ones). Subsequent testing (repeat amnio and umbilical cord blood sampling) showed contradictory results… the umbilical said “okay”, the second amnio said “Very Bad”. Ultrasounds didn’t show any issues.
They came very close to terminating based on the bad amnio results.
The kid… is fine. I’m not 100% sure what the final consensus was as to why they got the screwy amnio results - either the child had a minor mosaicism, or something that affected the placenta but not the baby, or what. But they spent several months in hell.