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!