Hi Everyone - This is my first post. I was thrilled to find out last summer that, at age 40, I was pregnant with our third child. That happiness turned to anguish when we found out that our precious baby had anencephaly - a neural tube defect. He had zero chance of survival outside the womb. I carried him for two more months, and then our sweet little Chase was born silently at five months gestation. He would have been due on April 23rd, and I feel his absence more than ever. I am now 41 years old, and feel like I will never be quite right again if the loss of Chase is my final maternal experience. I yearn for another child, but am desperately afraid that something could go wrong again. Anencephaly is very rare, and though my chances of it happening again are double the "normal" population, that's still only 2/1500. It's also not age-related, but that's not to say that the next pregnancy won't be affected by something age-related. It's hard to get over the experience of being the person sitting in the darkened ultrasound room who DOESN'T get to heave a sigh of relief. Instead, I learned up close and personal what it's like to be the person who gets the bad news. I so much want another baby, as do my husband and two sons (age 3 and 6), but my husband and I are really, really scared.