Parents with Dwarfism Welcome Children Despite Medical Challenges

  1. Their baby could be of average height.

  2. Their baby could inherit Achondroplasia, the same type of dwarfism Charli has.

  3. Their baby could inherit Geleophysic Dysplasia, the same type of dwarfism as Cullen.

  4. Or, the baby could inherit both conditions — a combination called “double dominant dwarfism,” which doctors have determined is fatal shortly after birth.

That means, with each pregnancy, there is a one in four chance that their baby will not survive. So, while most expectant mothers at twelve weeks were picking out baby clothes or posting ultrasound photos, Charli was lying on a hospital bed, preparing for a procedure known as Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) — similar to an amniocentesis. “It’s a massive needle through my abdomen,” she explained, “to take a sample of the placenta, which carries about a 2% risk of miscarriage. It’s the only way to find out the genetic makeup of my baby.” The wait for results was agonizing. “I wasn’t just waiting to find out the baby’s gender,” she wrote on Instagram. “I was waiting to learn whether I could bring this little one into the world come March 2021 — or if his or her journey would end before it began.”

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