Her Greatest Salvation -Olivia Benson

Risks

A week later found both Olivia and Elliot sitting in the waiting room of her obstetrician office, Olivia a tiny ball of nerves curled up in the chair, her head resting on Elliot's shoulder.

"Everythings going to be alright" he whispered.

She looked up at him, trying to believe what he had just told her. She wanted desperately for this baby to be alright.

"Olivia come on back" the nurse instructed. She sat up on the bed answering the seemingly endless questions that were thrown at her.

Once they were alone, Elliot climbed up onto the table next to her gently taking her into his arms. he knew she was terrified.

When the doctor came in Olivia watched as she took a seat, scanning through the manila folder in her hands.

"Well Olivia, according to your blood work you are definitely pregnant. Now, I don’t know If you remember me being your doctor when you had your son?"

"Yeah, barely. I was pretty out of it."

"How is the little guy doing by the way?"

"Good, growing like a weed." Olivia smiled.

The doctor laughed before turning serious again. "So Olivia, as you probably know there are a lot of risks for a woman your age but first, let's take a look at your baby before we talk."

"Alright," she squeaked. Slowly she laid down, shimmying her blouse up. She grasped Elliot's hand in hers focusing on the ceiling.

"Everything looks great so far Olivia," the doctor spoke. She turned to look a the screen, her heart stopping at the grainy black and white image that was displayed. Her baby, her and Elliots. It was a weird thought to her.

"Beautiful" she whispered a tear making its way down her cheek.

"And here is the heartbeat," the doctor said as she pushed a couple of buttons. The low but fast whooshing sound filled the room, bringing more tears to Olivia's eyes. She looked over to Elliot who to her surprise, was also crying.

"I'm estimating you to be about 8-9 weeks Olivia, do you want some pictures?"

"Yes please, I never had any with Jasper." She sighed.

After retrieving the pictures, the doctor sat back at the desk with Elliot and Olivia joining soon behind her.

"Alright, so everything looks good. But there are things we need to discuss. Now I am not telling you all this to scare you but you need to know what you are up against. Women your age, your bodies are going to have a harder time carrying to term and there chance you might end up with another preemie. We are going to have to watch your blood pressure very closely and make sure it won't get too high. Also, the chance of birth defects goes up drastically, at your age a chance of you having a baby with down syndrome is 1 in 30. There are some tests we can run and in my opinion, I suggest you have done."

"Integrated screening is a blood test that we can actually do today if you would like. It is a couple of tests that we would run again in the 2nd trimester and compare to the 1st-trimester result so definitely rule out any abnormalities. You wouldn’t get the results until after the 2nd trimester. Another one we would like to run is an amniocentesis and it can diagnose most chromosomal disorders such as Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida. The downside to this test is that there is a small chance of miscarriage because we would place a long needle into your abdomen, into the sac of fluid that is protecting your baby and withdraw a little."

"No," Olivia said.

"Liv are you sure?" Elliot spoke up.

"I'm not going to do anything to our baby that can result in us losing it. Not a chance."

"Well, you guys actually have time to discuss it, we can't do the test until after 15 weeks anyway."

"I'll do the blood test today though"

"Ok, I'll get that sat up. Also, I would like for you to start thinking about how you want to have this baby. It would be the safest route to go for a c-section since you had one last time. But if you are determined on pushing this baby out, we can prepare for that."

Olivia nodded her head, overwhelmed by all the information she had just received and it didn’t help her nerves at all.

"I know this is a lot to digest Olivia but we will do everything to try and get this baby to term. Because your son was a preemie and you were so sick for most of that pregnancy, it's going to make this one harder. I'm not going to lie to you. I put in the order for the blood test so you will be going down to the ground floor to have that done and I want you to set up an appointment for when you hit 12 weeks alright?"

The ride back to the precinct was quiet. Elliot reached over the console, gently intertwining their hands together. She looked over at him, a small smile plastering her face.

"You know everything will be alright" he whispered.

She sighed, rubbing her face with her free hand. "Yeah, I just….cant help but worry. I want this baby as weird as it sounds."

"That’s not weird Olivia, not at all. Are you sure you want to go back to the precinct?"

"Not really but I can't just leave my detectives alone."

"I'm sure they handle it themselves. Why don’t we go home and spend the day with the kids?"

"Yeah, alright let's do it."