Week 29/30

Since we've seen what seems like every specialist in Houston (ok, not really), we combined the last two weeks into one entry.  As of this past Saturday I'm 30 weeks along and will just see my OB every two weeks from here on out.  He'll check all the typical stuff for me and we'll listen to Bailey's heartbeat on the doppler and that will be our routine until I'm induced.  We had our final ultrasound at our appointment last week, and Bailey was, as usual, being difficult for the technician.  She continues to face away when they're trying to get her picture and was laying sort of transverse across my stomach instead of true breech (I'm making these terms up a little bit; I don't know if there's a "true breech"), which apparently makes it even MORE difficult to get measurements on her size.  She's still growing, but is still behind.  She's an itty bitty little peanut, only in the 5th percentile of growth.  On another note, my ankle bones are slowly but surely disappearing into an ongoing swollen state.  It's a little funny looking since my feet typically are kind of skinny, but now halfway up they start puffing way out.  James wanted to know when they would be classified as cankles.  We'll see just how puffy they get this week when I start back to teaching and am on my feet most of the day.

 

We need to again thank all the people that are continuing to send prayers our way, for us and for Bailey.  Literally everyday we hear of people who have told friends who have told friends who have told friends about what's going on and are praying for us.  It's amazing and we continue to feel so blessed and loved.  My entire faculty at school prayed over me and Bailey at the beginning of last week, which reminded me how lucky I am to work in such a great place with such fabulous, caring people. 

Week 28

Week 28 was not a fun week overall.  Wednesday we went down to Texas Children's to meet with a pediatric cardiologist, a neonatologist, and our whole team of nurses that will be helping us when Bailey is born.  Everyone we're working with there is nice and compassionate, which is wonderful, but that only makes things a little bit easier. 

When we met with the cardiologist, she did a long echo of Bailey's heart, looking at images and also listening to how it sounds.  Bailey seems to like to make things as difficult as possible for every doctor that is trying to get pictures of her.  Not only is she in breech position with her back facing up (apparently making it more difficult to see her heart because of her spine and ribs), she got the hiccups for about 15 minutes of our 40 minute echo. :)  My stomach bulges out pretty regularly on one side, and, up until now, I always assumed that was her little booty.  It's actually her head leaning back as she stretches out which makes me even more nervous about accidentally bumping my stomach on things (which tends to happen often as I forget about my new proportions).  After the echo, the cardiologist sat down with us and went through a healthy fetal heart and Bailey's heart.  She has very distinct arteries and veins, so the last doctor was wrong, but her valves and general structure are off.  The valves can almost be compared to an arthritic joint; they're very ragged and allow too much backflow to the previous chamber.  She also has a missing chunk of her septum (the muscular wall that separates the two ventricles), which was previously just thought to be a little hole.  All in all, her heart is not in very good shape.  The cardiologist said she didn't think Bailey's heart could sustain her for very long after she's off of my circulation.  She went through a surgery that she could do, but the surgery wouldn't be able to fix all of the problems in the heart, would be 6-8 hours, and Bailey would have to be put on a ventilator during and afterwards, which she then would probably not be able to come off.  We don't want to put her little body through all that (that surgery only addresses the heart and there are so many other things going on as well), so we've opted to make her as comfortable as possible after she's born and keep her with us.  If she makes it to 48 hours, they'll let us take her home with her medicines/feeding tube and we'll have a nurse that will swing by and check on us periodically. 

The neonatologist basically echoed what the cardiologist said when we had our team meeting.  The team meeting was a little uncomfortable (ok, really uncomfortable) because it's us with a team of seven professionals (nurses, doctors, etc) sitting around a table.  We were trying not to lose it, but yet felt like we needed to offer some profound, intelligent sounding insight after they gave us a piece of information.  I mostly opted for giving some sort of grunt or mmmmhmmm to show that I was still conscious.

We did the hospital tour as well after the team meeting.  The NICU is very impressive (and we met a NICU doctor who was the closest person I've ever met to being a walking sunshine, just amazing), and there are so many different levels of things they can do for babies.  We found out we get to have a few perks since we have to have such a detailed birth plan (this really doesn't matter at all, but when someone's been offering us a positive, we're latching on to it...).  There are only two delivery rooms with windows and we can actually put in our birth plan that we would like to have one of those rooms with a window.  And they'll have that all set for me since I'll have an induction date (still undecided).  Also, most people assume that when you go in to give birth you have to put on the ugly hospital gown when they tell you to.  You DON'T.  You can bring your own comfy nightgown from home so that you feel a lot cuter in pictures.  There aren't any stipulations on this (I mean, obviously don't bring PJs with pants), so I'm going to pick out something cute, pink, and soft to wear.  Now if I can see if I can put in my birth plan to have the sunshine-y NICU doctor with us, that would be great. :)

So, that was our week this week....I also went back to work and it's fun to be back with everyone from work again.  Bailey is still SO active, which is distracting in faculty meetings. :)  Please keep praying for her health!

Week 26/27

The picture is from week 26, but we're really updating for week 27 too.  We went and met our new OB today, Dr. Ivey.  He's really nice and gave us a lot of time and answered a lot of questions in greater detail from things we've seen on the ultrasound.  In addition to the two arteries being combined in the heart, there's a small hole in the septum of her heart, between her ventricles.  Like with the arteries, it's hard to say how Bailey's heart will react with this once she's outside of me.  He also said that even though it looks like there are calcium deposits in her kidneys, they look like they are producing urine, which is a good thing.  We also got to hear her heartbeat again (it sounds good to me, but like I know what I'm talking about....), and I did my glucose test.  The actual liquid I had to drink wasn't that bad, kind of like orange soda, but after sitting there for an hour waiting to get my blood drawn, my blood sugar crashed on the way to lunch and I felt HORRIBLE.  We got lunch pretty quickly and thankfully I felt so much better after that.  Bailey didn't seem to mind the test because she's been giving me some of her strongest kicks ever since I got home.

Dr. Ivey also went through the multitude of things we have to think about as we make our birth plan.  He didn't want us to make any decisions today, because we're still going to be getting a lot of new information in the next couple weeks, but wanted us aware of everything.  One of the major decisions that we have to make is doing a c-section, induced regular birth, or naturally going into labor with a regular birth.  There are pros and cons to each situation that we need to weigh, but we're leaning towards induced regular birth.  That way we have a schedule, we know which doctors will be at the hospital, and hopefully my water won't break in the middle of a classroom of 8th graders (that's not really a factor, but seriously, that would be interesting....).  Another set of decisions has to do with interventions we would want to have for Bailey based on what we know and will continue to find out as things move along.  We're not sure at all what we're going to do with that yet, but we do know we want her to be completely comfortable.  

We have an fetal echo coming up next week with the top pediatric cardiologist at Texas Children's to get a better idea of what's going on with her heart, and to see if it's a "hypoplastic" heart (basically means the side that sends out oxygenated blood to the body hasn't developed properly).  The week after that we have a follow up with Dr. Ivey and we'll have another ultrasound.  It's been such a blessing to be a part of TX Children's Fetal Center because our nurse coordinator has been getting us appointments with some of the top doctor's in Houston, which means they're also some of the top in the country. 

Thank you for your continued prayers and support!!