Baby Girl Update

As you see at the top of this page, we had an ultrasound last night and we have a new picture of our baby girl! She is 24 weeks, 4 days old in this picture - we can't believe how clear the picture is! Shane thinks she has Ryan's nose!

We met with the high-risk pregnancy doctor, Dr. Gordon, last night. He did the ultrasound and answered all of our questions. Basically, this baby is facing the most important month in her life right now. It is imperative that we get to 28 weeks. If we had to deliver today (very rare and not very likely at this point), she has about a 50% chance of survival. The further we get along in the pregnancy, the higher her chance of survival. It would take a lot of uncontrollable bleeding at this point for them to make the life-saving decision for me, in order to make them deliver the baby at this point. It would only be to save my life. Dr. Gordon feels confident that my body will stop bleeding (in fact, we haven't seen any blood since about 2 pm yesterday afternoon) and I will be able to go home soon. With the complete previa (he confirmed that on the ultrasound), it is likely that I will bleed again before the baby is born. I need to be on bed rest and really take it easy from here on out. Yes, I've been on bed rest for a little more than 3 weeks now, but he is pretty strict about the bed rest and it doesn't sound like they will be lifting any restrictions. (Quite the opposite, in fact.)

I posted something yesterday about the steroid shot they gave me to help the development of the baby's lungs. I misunderstood and said the wrong thing in my blog. The steroid will help the baby if we had to deliver in the next 2 weeks or so. I don't think this is going to happen, it would be pretty rare, and it is not usually recommended or helpful to repeat the steroid shot later. There is something that the Neo-Natal Doctor could recommend called a Rescue Steroid but usually those are not administered. It is an option and if we had to do it, I guess we could. I don't know too much about it - we'll cross that bridge later. Or hopefully we won't have to. :)

I feel good about going home. I know everyone would think that I'm just dying to go home and be in my own bed - yes, in some ways that's true. But, I know that I'm safer in the hospital, the baby is safer in the hospital. The food is terrible, the TV has only about 4 channels that I would watch, I don't have all of my "stuff" from home, I miss Shane and Ryan immensely, but I do have constant care and that is reassuring. It's hard to say what I would prefer but I feel stable enough to try being at home again.

It's important to note that this trip to the hospital was not as a result of my bleeding. I came in with some kind of GI bug - apparently it's going around - and the vomiting, etc caused the bleed. It would be more concerning if it had been a spontaneous bleed that didn't have anything to do with doing something strenuous (like throwing up).

Anyway, long story short - baby is fine at this point, mommy is fine (and will be better every day that we go without bleeding) and we just have to wait and see. My doctor still has a 3-strikes-and-you're-out policy. The next bleed will constitute a long-term hospital stay.

I'm not very good at asking for it, but if you're looking for a way to help... :) At first I thought I wanted phone calls or company. I don't NEED that. What we need are extra hands around the house. We could use food or prepared meals (makes it easier when Shane gets home from work), we could use basic household help, you know, vacuuming, dusting, unloading the dishwasher, laundry, etc so Shane doesn't have to do it in the few precious hours he has at home. It is very strange to have someone clean your home or do work around you but we realize that people want to help and these are things that we need help with. Extra hands with Ryan would help as well - Shane is still trying to maintain his philanthropic work at The Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity, and is going to work at The Special Olympics this weekend. (We have a lot of support from our future sister-in-law Sarah in regards to taking care of Ryan but we don't want to wear her thin - she works full-time and is getting her Master's Degree and is planning her wedding!) I will work on having a list of things that would help us out on our refrigerator - if you call and ask I'll probably tell you we don't need anything. :)

Of course we know not everyone can help physically. Prayers are so helpful and we appreciate all of the thoughts and cards and everything that so many of you have sent. It really helps in keeping our spirits up and our hopes high. The other thing you can do is support your local March of Dimes chapter. They do research on and are "dedicated to improving the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality." (marchofdimes.org) Of course this has become a priority in our minds at this time.

Thanks for reading. I'm also on facebook if you have a facebook account or our email addresses are becca8780@sbcglobal.net or shanes.me01@gtalumni.org.

Talk to you soon,
Becca