The Five Weeks That Changed Everything: Beckham’s Diagnosis and the Parts of My Pregnancy I Almost Didn’t Share

For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share this part of my story.

It’s messy.

It’s vulnerable.

And honestly, it’s not the version of pregnancy we’re often shown—the glowing, joyful, picture-perfect journey we’re expected to have.

But I think there is value in telling the parts of our stories that are harder to say out loud.

Because the truth is, you can desperately love your baby and still struggle.

You can be incredibly grateful for a pregnancy while simultaneously grieving the changes it’s bringing to your life.

Both things can be true.

Beckham was planned. He was wanted, prayed for, and loved long before he was ever conceived. When I saw those two pink lines, I was overwhelmed with excitement. I dreamed about our future as a family of four and couldn’t wait to become a “boy mom” again.

But somewhere along the way, excitement slowly gave way to fear.

As the weeks passed, my mental health began to unravel.

I questioned everything.

Was having another baby almost ten years after my first son the right decision? Was I really ready to start over? Did I have it in me to survive the sleepless nights, the endless feedings, and the complete loss of the independence I’d spent years rebuilding?

Would I lose the woman I had finally come to know and love, only to look in the mirror and not recognize myself anymore?

The guilt that came with those thoughts was overwhelming.

Looking back, I’m sure it was a combination of things—pregnancy hormones, feeling sick and uncomfortable most days, lowering my antidepressant to the lowest possible dose, old wounds resurfacing, and the overwhelming reality that my life was about to change forever.

Whatever the reason, the darkness kept growing.

Then everything changed.

At 32 weeks pregnant, I walked into what I thought would be another routine ultrasound.

Up until that point, I had every reason to believe Beckham was healthy.

We had completed our anatomy scan at 20 weeks—the ultrasound where every tiny part of your baby is carefully examined—and we had been told everything looked normal.

So I wasn’t prepared for what happened next—I wasn't prepared to hear something was wrong with my child.

What followed was a blur of additional imaging, conversations, questions, and eventually words that would forever divide my pregnancy into a before and an after:

Our baby had spina bifida.

I remember trying to process everything being said to us while simultaneously feeling like I had left my own body.

As a neonatal nurse practitioner, I knew what spina bifida was. I had cared for babies with myelomeningocele. I knew about surgery after birth, VP shunts, neurogenic bowel and bladder, and the possibility of mobility challenges.

But knowing those things as a medical provider and hearing them spoken about your own child are two entirely different experiences.

Suddenly, the terminology I had used countless times at work belonged to my baby.

And I wasn’t the provider standing beside the bed helping another family understand what came next.

I was the mother sitting on the other side, desperately trying to understand what my son’s life might look like.

Over the days that followed, we learned more.

We learned that Beckham’s spinal defect was in the lower portion of his spine. We learned that he also had a Chiari II malformation, a condition commonly associated with myelomeningocele in which part of the brain is pulled downward toward the spinal canal. We also learned that he had mild ventriculomegaly, meaning the fluid-filled spaces within his brain were slightly enlarged.

And then came another devastating realization.

The abnormalities associated with Beckham’s diagnosis had not suddenly appeared at 32 weeks.

We had been told his 20-week anatomy scan was normal.

Now, twelve weeks later, we were facing a diagnosis that should have been evaluated much earlier in pregnancy.

Instead of having months to learn, prepare, seek additional opinions, and understand all of our options, we had weeks.

Five weeks.

Five weeks between learning our baby had spina bifida and meeting him.

Those five weeks became some of the longest and shortest weeks of my life.

Our calendars quickly filled with appointments, specialists, imaging, consultations, and conversations I never imagined having during pregnancy.

We learned what Beckham’s first days of life might look like—that he would need surgery shortly after birth to close the opening in his back and that his ventriculomegaly would need to be closely monitored after birth. We talked about his bladder and bowel function, his legs, his feet, his mobility, and all of the things no one could predict with certainty before he was born.

Would he walk?

Would he have feeling in his legs?

Would he have bladder or bowel control?

Would he need a wheelchair?

Would he be able to live independently someday?

Would he be okay?

There were so many questions.

And so few guarantees.

We also learned that earlier identification of myelomeningocele can allow families to be evaluated for fetal surgery—a procedure performed during pregnancy to repair the spinal defect before birth in carefully selected pregnancies.

By the time we learned Beckham’s diagnosis, that window had passed.

I will never know exactly how our journey might have looked had we been given that information at 20 weeks.

Maybe the outcome would have been the same.

Maybe it wouldn’t have.

But losing the opportunity to ask those questions, explore those options, and make those decisions for our son was painful in a way that is difficult to put into words.

And somewhere in the middle of the appointments, medical terminology, and frantic attempt to prepare for a life we hadn’t anticipated, the fears that had consumed so much of my pregnancy suddenly felt very different.

For months, I had been overwhelmed by the thought of simply having another newborn again.

Now I would have given anything to go back to worrying about nothing more than sleepless nights and dirty diapers.

The emotion that surprised me the most wasn’t sadness.

It was anger.

I was angry with God.

I cried.

I begged.

I pleaded.

“Why us?”

“Why my baby?”

“Why my family?”

And almost immediately came guilt.

In my heartbreak, I convinced myself that God was punishing me for not appreciating the healthy baby I thought I was carrying.

Maybe I hadn’t been grateful enough.

Maybe I had somehow caused this.

I don’t believe that now.

But I believed it then.

Beyond the anger and guilt came a grief so deep I didn’t know how to carry it.

I mourned the childhood I had imagined for Beckham. I grieved the surgeries he would endure, the challenges he might face, and the uncertainty surrounding his future.

More than anything, I grieved because there was absolutely nothing I could do to take any of it away from him.

There were moments when the weight of it all became unbearable.

The best way I know how to describe it is this:

I felt like I had been dropped into the middle of the ocean during a storm.

I was drowning.

There wasn’t a life raft.

There wasn’t land in sight.

I didn’t want this.

I didn’t want this life.

I didn’t want this life for my child.

I wanted out.

Not because I didn’t love my son.

But because I loved him so much that I couldn’t imagine watching him struggle—and I couldn’t imagine how either of us would survive the road ahead.

For a long time, I was ashamed of those feelings.

But now I understand something I desperately needed someone to tell me during those five weeks:

You can grieve a diagnosis without grieving your child.

You can wish the diagnosis away while loving the person who carries it with every piece of your heart.

Grief and love can exist together.

Fear and hope can coexist.

One does not cancel out the other.

And then Beckham was born.

On May 28th, at 8:43 in the morning, our five-pound, twelve-ounce little boy entered the world.

I looked into his eyes.

I held his tiny body.

And suddenly the diagnosis that had consumed every waking thought for five weeks had a face.

It was his face.

And he was perfect.

Over the days that followed, I watched him endure things no newborn should ever have to face.

He underwent surgery to repair the opening in his spine on the day he was born. The following day, he needed another surgery to place a VP shunt to help manage the buildup of cerebrospinal fluid within his brain.

Before we left the NICU, he underwent a third surgery when that shunt needed to be revised.

Three surgeries in the first eleven days of his life.

But I also watched him recover.

I watched him breathe on his own.

I watched him learn to breastfeed.

I watched his tiny fingers wrap around mine.

And somewhere in those moments, something inside me began to change.

For the first time since that ultrasound, I could see beyond everything I was afraid of.

I could see Beckham.

The grief didn’t disappear. Neither did the uncertainty. There are still appointments that scare me and nights when I wonder what challenges his future may hold.

But when I look at Beckham now, I don’t see his diagnosis first.

I see my son.

I see his smile and his personality beginning to emerge. I see a little boy who has already endured more in the first months of his life than many people will experience in years—and somehow continues to greet the world with sweetness and strength.

His diagnosis is part of his story.

But it is not the whole story.

And it certainly does not define his worth.

If there is one thing I wish I could go back and tell the version of myself who was drowning during those five weeks, it would be this:

The life you are afraid of can still be beautiful.

Not because the diagnosis disappears.

Not because the road suddenly becomes easy.

But because eventually, you begin to see your child beyond everything you were told to fear.

And if you’re reading this in the middle of your own storm—whether you’ve just received a prenatal diagnosis, you’re sitting beside your child in a hospital room, or you’re staring at a future that suddenly looks nothing like the one you imagined—I hope you give yourself permission to feel all of it.

The grief.

The anger.

The fear.

And eventually, hope.

Because hope has a way of growing in places we never thought it could.

Sometimes it’s found in a successful surgery, a reassuring appointment, or a milestone you once feared might never come.

Sometimes it arrives in the form of a tiny hand wrapped around your finger.

And sometimes…

It arrives in the form of a five-pound, twelve-ounce little boy named Beckham.

The five weeks between Beckham’s diagnosis and his birth changed me forever.

But the little boy who came afterward is still changing me every single day.

And if sharing the parts of our story that are messy, painful, vulnerable, and difficult to say out loud helps even one parent standing at the beginning of this journey feel a little less alone—and a little more hopeful about what may be waiting for them on the other side—then every vulnerable word has been worth it.