This is the official update! Sorry it has taken a while. A lot of you have been asking and I've been wanting to get back, but it has been crazy the last week and a half! Anyways...here is the scoop. Sorry if it's hard to understand, I was just trying to get everything down.
So, Tuesday was our appointment at the High Risk clinic in Cincinnati. I had talked to Dr. Brady’s (one of the heads of the high risk unit) secretary the day before to make sure all of the information and tests that the Dr. requested was all aligned with the nurses at the clinic. When we arrived on Tuesday they had us speak with a Financial Counselor, Social worker, Nurse Coordinator, and the Intern, who referred back to the Dr. Polzin (the other head Dr.) Dr. Polzin said that they would be scheduling us for a C-section at 39 weeks. Tuesday night I called to schedule an ultrasound, and they got me in the next morning. (YAY!) The ultrasound tech actually ended up being my mom’s childhood friend, and she was wonderful. Paul was allowed in the room, which was so awesome. In Canada they only allowed Paul to be in the room for the last 2 mins. So, he was really excited to be in the room. Dr. Habli (a fetal high risk specialists) came in half way to put on the 3D ultrasound and check out the lesion (the cyst on the lower back) and the brain. The lesion hasn’t grown since the last ultrasound and they did notice that there were some menigies (part of the spinal cord covering) and they think part of the spinal cord. However, it is much less than what they usually see. Also, it is covered by skin which makes it less of an emergency since there will be no leaks. This means that they won’t have to operate within that 24 hr period after birth, they may be able to wait longer. They did say that they would take the baby to Children’s Hospital within a couple of hours of birth. They had a hard time seeing the cerebellum but they thought it looked fine. A lot of times there is tension from the pulling on the spinal cord which causes the cerebellum to be pulled down into the spinal column. THIS is what they call the Arnold Chiari Type II. (The Cerebellum is the muscle center of the brain.) We will find out more about the cerebellum and the contents of the lesion on Wednesday when we have our MRI done. We were able to talk to Dr. Polzin while we were in the ultrasound too. We LOVE him and are excited that he is our Dr. On a side note the ultrasound tech put on the 3D for us while the Drs were busy so we were able to see HER face. Yep…we found out. I was VERY surprised, but excited! YAY for baby girls!!!!
It’s funny because when we walk in for an ultrasound…or just a simple check up they always have 5 other people for us to see. (this place is a well oiled machine…sooooo organized. We feel like we are there ONLY patients! It’s great!) We did see a Genetics counselor who gave us the option of getting an Amnio to see if the baby has Downs Syndrom, Trysomy 13 or 18. She said that sometimes babies have Spina Bifida as a result of these other disorders. The Amnio would just let us know ahead of time to mentally prepare for it. Since we did not see any other symptoms on the ultrasound of these defects (ie: heart defects, small hands etc) we opted not to have the amnio. Amniocentesis are risky and we didn’t want to add a whole other risk to this baby!
Though everything sounds on the better side of things, the Drs can’t predict the outcome. They won’t know how severely the baby is affected until after birth. They only said that they have seen much much worse. Sooo..we’ll see!!
After our MRI on Wednesday we will speak with a team of High Risk maternity Drs and a team of Fetal Specialists at Children’s all together to discuss everything. And, the clinic is going to see us 2 weeks from now and 2xs a week after that until the baby is born. So…it’s going to be crazy. Paul is actually going up next week to settle everything at home so that he can be here 3 weeks earlier than we were anticipating. Now we are just waiting for immigrations to come through so he can apply for jobs. There is a lot going on, but we are calm and everything is working out better than we could have planned. God is really taking care of us and the hospital/ Dr situation, so we are trusting that immigrations will come through too.
Thank you ALL for your continued prayers, comforting words, and support. They have meant the world to us! We know that we would not be in the same place if it weren’t for your prayers! Thank you, thank you, thank you again for EVERYTHING you have done for us! We love you and will keep you posted!
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