Hello and welcome to Share. I am so very sorry to hear of the loss of your beloved Kara.
My first baby, Marco, was born 8 years ago at 29 weeks with multiple defects. He lived for about 4 hours before we had to make the impossible decision to discontinue life support, as his life was unfortunately just not sustainable. We did know of the problems starting around 20 weeks. The issue that my OB saw that alerted her to a problem was that he was smaller than he should have been on sonogram, so she sent me to a high risk OK where they picked up many more problems. The next 7 weeks were a whirlwind of testing. Instead of answers, it felt like each test yielded more questions.
It is understandable that you are feeling confused and frustrated about none of these issues being detected on ultrasound. I'll tell you that even though some of Marco's issues were detected on ultrasound, a number of them were not - and most doctors gave us different interpretations at each ultrasound. It was very hard.
Will you meet with a genetics doctor to go over Kara's final autopsy results? Hopefully so. That was helpful to my husband and me. She gave us a very thorough run down of everything. In our case, she said that it was most likely a "fluke". There were no chromosomal abnormalities. Therefore, it had to have been some type of genetic disorder, however she said there are so many genetic disorders, and his condition didn't fit any that she could find.
Hopefully, whoever reviews the results with you can give you guidance on trying again.
One thing I learned from Marco's loss is that nothing is guaranteed. Having said that, I will share that we did decide, given the information that our genetics doctor shared with us, to go ahead and try again. It was not an easy road, but 8 years later, we now have two healthy daughters, 6 and 2 years old. I was so scared during both of their pregnancies that something, anything, would go wrong. But I had hope, and I just took it one step at a time. The things that helped me the most were: 1. Writing here on Share; and 2. Attending a local loss and pregnancy after loss support group. Had it not have been from the support I received here on Share and in the support group I attended, I don't know where I'd be right now.
Please know that you're not alone. The loss of a baby is so much more than the loss of a baby. It's the loss of your innocence, your hopes and dreams for that baby, and so much more. Remember to take things one day at a time.
Keep us posted as you can.
Hugs -
Libby