Our doctor said that we will do another ultrasound at 37 or 38 weeks to see how the baby is developing and if he is fully developed, that she may consider inducing labor at 39 weeks. This is something that I really do not believe in. I mean, if and when the baby is ready, he will let me know by coming out! Right? I know people do this all the time but... I don't agree with this practice at all. What if there was one little thing that wasn't finished developing? I dunno... I'll have to pray hard on this one.

She's not sure at this point if I'll be having a regular delivery or a C-Section. If he's as big as they think he'll be, I THINK I would want a C-section. I'm not even sure if my frame can handle a 9 or 10 lb baby. Man.. the thought of it scares me to death too! ugh. So I guess we'll see what happens! YIKES! :) Oh.. and I've only gained 18 lbs. I actually lost a pound. I'm sure it's because I was sick last week. But who cares.. 18 lbs is great!!

Since he works nights we weren't able to celebrate, but we plan to this weekend. We actually have to go to Fayetteville, AR to the VA hospital for Danny on Monday to do some testing on his arm, so we've decided to make a weekend of it and just stay down that way to get away and celebrate too. Getting away from everything sounds so FABULOUS!! I'm in desperate need of some stress-free relaxatation! :)

He said that 2 of the 4 chambers of the baby’s heart are a little larger than they are supposed to be. They did a more in-depth testing and sent those tests off to a pediatric cardio heart specialist to look over.

Dr. Fraser gave us all kinds of SCARY scenarios, including the possibility of a still birth and we were absolutely… DEVISTATED. Evidently that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been doing the monitoring and given that there may be something wrong with the baby’s heart it makes those odds a tad more possible. We were walking around like zombies and praying constantly since Tuesday. I won’t go into all the “might happens” Dr. Fraser told us because it’s pointless. I’ll just tell you want we found out from him from the specialist (Dr. Tong) yesterday. Because this is what we know is real so far.

It looks like the baby has Coarctation of the Aorta: http://mayoclinic.com/health/coarctation-of-the-aorta/DS00616

The specialist said that (at this point) the baby has a 15% chance of needing heart surgery when he’s born to fix this problem. Which, considering what we heard from Dr. Fraser on Tuesday is WONDERFUL news! 15% chance is better than what Dr. Fraser was saying. He also said that thankfully, this is the only heart problem they see at this time which is really good. He said that although surgery on an infant is always risky, that this procedure/surgery has a high recovery rate and that the baby should be fine… if he even needs the surgery. But we probably will not know that until after the baby is born.

He said we have two options:

OPTION 1: Have the baby in Springfield and have the baby tested to see if he needs the surgery or not after he is born. If not, we’re good to go! However, if he does need the surgery, they will transport the baby to Washington University Hospital in St. Louis for the surgery. Meanwhile, I’m still in Springfield recovering and my baby is left alone in St. Louis. L L The doctor’s in Springfield are not equipped to do this type of surgery on infants.

OPTION 2: The other option, which is the one we’re planning on doing, is to have the baby in St. Louis. That way if he needs to have the surgery, we’re all there together. And if he doesn’t need the surgery, we’ll go see a St. Louis Cardinals game after delivery! (totally kidding!!!) With this option, they will induce labor about a week early. I asked what would happen if I went earlier… like if my water broke before our scheduled induction. (Steffan was 1.5 weeks early) He said if I do go early, they will evaluate and see if they are able to transport me to St. Louis or not at that time. If they can, they will. If not... it’s back to option 1. I pray that doesn’t happen!! I can’t stand the thought of having this baby and him flying off to a big city all alone and having surgery and not recognizing anyone’s voices. Ugh… Not going to let my mind go there right now.

For now… they are going to continue monitoring the situation at my weekly monitoring/ultrasound appointments and see how everything develops. Danny and I are also going to meet with the cardio specialist (Dr. Tong) in Springfield on Monday afternoon so he can answer our million questions and give us a more detailed report. Dr. Fraser was basically telling us the basics yesterday over the phone of what Dr. Tong said. So it will be nice to get the scoop directly from the horses mouth.

Today we’re both in much better spirits after getting the specialist’s opinion. Although it wasn’t the news we wanted to hear, it wasn’t as devastating and full of doom as the fetal medicine doctor’s (Dr. Fraser). I guess he just wanted to prepare us for the worst but geeeesh! It was bruuuuuutal.

A really groovy thing did happen yesterday that helped me tons. Evidently there is a lady in my church that works at the fetal medicine clinic with Dr. Fraser. She wrote me an email and introduced herself and told me that if I had any questions or anything to call her or email her. So I immediately did!! She’s kind of made my mind rest a lot easier regarding a lot of questions I had. This was a HUGE blessing!!! And I’m so thankful that God sent her to me. :)

We still haven’t said anything to Steffan yet. I think we’re going to wait until we talk with Dr. Tong because we may have an actual game plan at that time and have more details.

I’ll keep you posted on how that goes on Monday.

So, please keep us in your prayers.. all 3 of us. But especially the baby. I know God is in control. And I really do believe the baby is going to be fine. And I also believe that the baby’s heart can be healed by prayer. We ask all of you to pray for healing for our baby so he doesn’t have to go thru any kind of surgery. And that we don’t have to deliver in St. Louis. Even though Danny thinks it would be great to be born that close to the St. Louis Cardinals. :)

Thanks everybody… and again... I’ll keep you posted on what the specialist says on Monday.

But back to the shower! :) I got so many nice things!! Lots of needed diapers! And some adorable clothes that I can't wait to see our little one in. And one of the ladies knitted him a little jacket. It is ADORABLE!!! I love handmade items. And one of the funniest things, someone got him a pacifier that reads "Mute Button". ha! ha! So funny & cute!! We just received all kinds of great items and I'm so grateful for everything. You can view the list of items here!

We met yesterday with the pediatric cardiologist (Dr. Tong) here in Springfield that there may only be a 10% chance the baby will have to have surgery. But they just won’t know until the baby is born because the heart works differently while in the womb. The type of heart defect this is, is hard to know for sure if he needs the surgery until he is born. While he is still warm and cozy inside, both sides of the heart pump blood to the baby. But once outside, an artery closes and then it’s just the one side that pumps blood to the body. And so they won’t be able to tell until that artery closes if he needs the surgery or not. And that could take 10 minutes or 2 days for it to close up. He said they are being very cautious and want to be prepared incase they do need to do the surgery.

He said the surgery itself takes a whopping 10 minutes! They go in from the side, under his little arm… not the chest! Another YEAH!

The recovery time is 7 to 10 days and then we can take him home. We have had family offer to let us stay with them during this time and are SO thankful for them!! One less thing to worry about!

We also asked Dr. Tong if it would be better (less stress) on the baby if we had a c-section and he said it didn’t matter either way. They have done studies and found it didn’t have any affect on the baby’s heart one way or the other. So that was cool news to me!

The Springfield cardio guy is going to send everything (tests) to St. Louis and they will evaluate them to see what they think of the situation.

Today we talked with the Fetal Monitor doctor (Dr. Fraser) and he said there is no way St. Louis will come back and say there is no need to deliver there (which is Washington University Hospital)… and Danny and I have already decided we want to delivery up there because even if there is a smidgen of a chance he needs the surgery… we want to be where we need to be. So, Dr. Fraser suggested he go ahead and get us set up with the doctor’s up in St. Louis . We should hear from them later this week to find out when we need to be there and what the plan is. All I know is that they will deliver at 39 weeks, which would make it around May 7-ish.

Just a bit of news… they did our weekly ultrasound and saw the same thing they saw last week with his heart. BUT… they did the measurements of the baby. Guess how much he weighs right now… EIGHT POUNDS!!!! And Dr. Fraser said he will gain 7 oz each week. So you do the math!! I have about 3 weeks to go!

And we were supposed to have a regular OBGYN appointment today, but she got called away to deliver a baby. L So we weren't able to ask her any of the questions we wanted to. L But we’ll see her next week.

We just want to say thank you to everyone for all your prayers and support during all of this. We appreciate it SOOOOO much!! And we truly believe that the baby is not going to need the surgery. And your prayers have helped our stress level as well. We have a much better outlook on everything than we did last week.

God bless all of you and thank you so much!! The encouraging words and prayers have helped us beyond what I even say.

I told her (actually begged her) if we could please have all these appointments all in one day so that we don’t have to make 2 trips and spend more $$ on hotels. Thankfully… she came thru for us. (She was SUPER nice and helpful by the way.)

So we have 4 different appointments, beginning at 8am and ending with a tour of the facility at 3:30pm on May 30. So we’ll go up on the 29th and stay at a hotel (that has shuttle service to the hospital so we don’t have to pay for parking!) and come back after our appointments on the 30th. It will be a very long day!! I guess we will see how we feel after all that if we stay another day in St. Louis or not. But Danny has to go back to work on May 1 because he only has 3 days left of vacation. After that… no pay. No pay = no good! So we would have to start out pretty early in the a.m. on the 30th for him to make it to work by 3pm. And that’s hard on him so… we’ll just have to play that one by ear.

And by the way, I'm 36 weeks pregnant today! :)

Not only do I have those lovely kankles... I'm unable to wear my wedding ring anymore because my fingers are so swollen. I'm wearing the ring my grandma gave me for "something blue" on our wedding day. But even that is getting hard to get off so I may need to take that one off. I hate that. I don't want to look like I'm an unwed mom, you know? But... looks like I'm going to have to, eh?

I'm 37 weeks pregnant today! OK, the past couple of days I have really felt miserable. My feet and hands are so swollen I can hardly walk. But I'm making it! And no... I will not show pictures of my fat fee and hands no matter how much you try to pay me. Well... maybe... ;)

I also ordered a groovy diaper bag today. And of all places, it's from Sears! I saw this bag at other places online for $60 and $80. Who would have thought I would find such a groovy thing at Sears! Click here to see! I really wanted this one, but of course, out of stock.

I’m not really sure how to start this update. I’ll just tell you the main things and then go into more detail later.

I was a bit nervous on how this day was going to start out because the hotel had NO HOT WATER! And for the first time in my life (that I can remember anyway), I had to take a cold shower! 9 mos pregnant! What an awakening! And to make matters worse, the guy at the front desk didn't care. He said if I would have waited 20 to 30 minutes, I would have had hot water. And for his apology? "Sorry about that." As he handed me my bill. Well, needless to say, Holiday Inn got a nice letter from me!! :)

First, we are back home… with no baby.

They did not induce me while we were up in St. Louis, more on why later.

We will be checking into the Barnes-Jewish hospital at 9PM on Wednesday, May 7 and they will begin inducing me then, but will not have the baby until Thursday, May 8. The drugs that they will be giving me to start the procedure only start the dilation… I won’t be having any contractions until they give me that fun drug pitocin (sp?). yeah… can’t wait for that one! Ha!

After closer examination of the baby’s heart, they will definitely be doing surgery on him after he is born. It may be that Friday after he’s born or wait until the Monday afterwards. They don’t want to operate over the weekend because they want to make sure the heart team is there and not all of them will be there on weekends. We are crushed over this news.

Since we know when the baby will be born (if everything goes according to plan and my body and the baby cooperates!) the social workers at the hospital went ahead and put us on the waiting list for the Ronald McDonald House. We won’t know if we can get in until we’re closer to the date.

Now for the more details.

We got to the hospital at 8am yesterday (April 30) and everyone of the people we met from the receptionists to the doctors and technicians were FABULOUS! We can’t say enough about these people. They actually made the day fun because we were able to joke and play around with them all day.

Our first appointment was with the Fetal Monitoring folks and they did an ultrasound. Guess what… the baby is now weighing in at 9lbs!! YIKES!! While she was doing the ultrasound I thought I saw the baby’s face and said, “Awe look! How cute! Is that the baby’s face?” And she said, “No… that’s your right ovary!” ha! ha! And I said that it was still very cute. So then she showed me the left ovary and it wasn’t as cute. So she actually took a picture of the left ovary and typed on there, “This is the left ovary. Not as cute as the right one.” Ha! Too funny! Then she was checking the baby for spinal bifida (which he doesn’t have) and so she was going all the way down the spine and ended up with his little behind on full on the screen. So she took another picture of that and wrote, “Nice buns.” I’ll have these photos on our website today so you can see them.

Then we met with one of the doctor’s who might possibly deliver the baby (Dr. Rampersad) (there are 4 others that might delivery, but didn’t meet with them).

Here’s why they didn’t delivery the baby while we were up there. The doctor said that in order to deliver the baby at 38 weeks while we were there, they would have to do an Amnio test to make sure the baby’s lungs were fully developed. We said no way. Too many complications can arise with it at this stage and we were not willing to put the baby in jeopardy. He’s got enough to deal with when he’s born.

She also said that I can still deliver the baby naturally… no c-section unless something comes up. This makes me feel better… sorta! Ha! 9 lbs is a tad scary… and he still has another week to grow! Ha! But the healing process will be better for me and I’m going to need to heal quickly so I can be there for my little guy while he’s recovering from his surgery.

I feel pretty confident that I won’t go into labor before next week. Danny’s isn’t so confident. He’s pretty nervous about this actually. But the doctor’s checked me over and said that I’m not dilated or anything so I’m not worried. We have a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday with my regular OBGYN and if anything has changed then we’ll hop in a car and drive to St. Louis on Tuesday night instead of leaving Wednesday morning.

After that appointment we had the fetal echo appointment. Which is when we found out that the baby will definitely be having surgery. This kind of knocked the wind out of us because the pediatric cardiologist doctor in Springfield said that this type of heart problem could fix itself after he’s born and that there would only be about a 10% chance he would have to have surgery, AND that if he had to have surgery it’s only 10 minutes. Evidently… he was extremely wrong.

The pediatric Cardiologist we met with (Dr. Sharkey – who won best doctor in America award in 2007) said that this will not correct itself, and that the surgery lasts at least 3 hours. She found a couple other issues with his heart, but can’t really tell 100% for sure until the baby is born and they can do an echo on him then to see if they really are an issue or not. Since the baby is full term (and big) it’s hard for them to see some things thru an ultrasound. So we’re not going to worry about those things until we have to. One thing at a time! The other things may be non-issues anyway. One of the things may not be an issue for the baby until he’s about 50 years old! So we’ll wait until he’s born and he has his echo to see what else is going on with his heart.

As I said before, they will start inducing me on Wednesday evening and we will hopefully have a baby on Thursday. After he is born, if his vitals are ok and he looks good, they will allow me to hold him for a little bit. But then they will take him to the Children’s hospital (which is within walking distance from Barne’s Hospital) and he will be staying in the Special Care Nursery until it’s time for his surgery. (I think they called it CICU). They want to make sure he is stable enough for surgery and is eating well first. He will probably have his surgery on Monday, May 12. After his surgery is over, he will be in the NICU (http://www.barnesjewish.org/obgyn/default.asp?NavID=3328#NICU). After he is doing well there, he will stay in the hospital a little while longer to make sure he’s doing fine. Once he’s fine… we get to bring him home. Which will be 7 to 10 days.

We were able to tour both of the above baby facilities and, although it’s kind of overwhelming to see all those baby’s hooked up to machines and all in one place… I feel much better about where he will be because we know he will be getting the best care possible and there are a lot of staff that will be there if anything goes wrong…. Which it won’t!!

One of the nurses told us that we need to hug whoever found the coartation because they are not easy to see and or find in an ultrasound. Danny & I know God is the one who showed that tech the coarctation. So that we can make sure the baby is in the right place at the right time to get the best care.

So again we wait!

Danny will start his Family leave on Tuesday and will not go back to work until the baby comes home. It’s going to be pretty rough during that time because neither of us will be working and/or getting paid. The hospital actually has WiFi so I will be able to do some of my web work so that will help a little. I’ll just do web updates… simple tasks. But I won’t be taking on any new big projects until I get back so I can devote my attention on the baby. And we realllly hope that we can get into the Ronald McDonald house because it’s right next to the hospital and it’s only $5/day. We’re not worried about this part because we know God will provide. He always does!

If you have any questions about anything… feel free to ask. It’s a lot of info to take in. I know it was for us!! We didn’t leave the hospital until 5:45pm yesterday. It was an extremely long day. Then we drove back home and got in about 10pm. We were… ARE… exhausted. We’re kind of zombie-fied today.

Anyway… please continue to keep all of us in your prayers and I will keep you posted on any new developments.

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