News of the baby

Well here the story goes...on Jan 2nd we had a meeting with a specialist from the Mayo Clinic. My doctor here in Northfield was a little concerned about our baby's size and the amount of fluid surrounding him or her so she suggested we see the specialist when he came to town. During the ultrasound he first focused in on the brain and didn't see anything that concerned him. And then he went to the heart. What he found was that the left ventricle appeared to be smaller than the right. He also said that the baby was only measuring in the 6th percentile for size and there was not much fluid. He quickly got up...made a phone call down to Mayo...and then informed us that it was not looking good and we needed to be seen down at Mayo tomorrow. Well needless to say, that was not a very good day for us. I think by the end of the day I was emotionally spent! But we kept praying and calling on family and friends to help us pray. That night (or early morning) at 4 a.m. I woke up and just started crying. Well that woke Jon up and we started praying again. All of a sudden our baby just started kicking like crazy and really hard! I had never felt the baby kick that hard...Jon could even feel it which was the first time and so cool! I told Jon that I believe the baby took a growth spurt over night and he told me that he was thinking that they would find so much fluid around the baby that all was going to be okay. Well we couldn't sleep after that so we got up and decided to go into Northfield for breakfast and just enjoy our morning. That afternoon we went to Mayo and first met with the pediatric cardiologist. After about an hour of laying there having a fetal echocardiogram done we met Dr. Allison. She told us that it didn't seem to look as bad as what Dr. Rose had originally thought but that it was still a serious heart defect. What the baby has is called an unbalance AV Canal defect and also it borders along the lines of hypoplastic left heart syndrom. The good news was that the left ventricle still seemed to be growing and it was pumping and working on its own. So that was a little better news than what we thought we'd get. Then we went to have another ultrasound and meet with Dr. Rose. Well the first thing he said was "where did all that fluid come from?" And then he said, "lets see where the baby is measuring today since yesterday it was in the 6th percentile." Well the ultra tech couldn't believe he said that because the baby was measuring in the 33rd percentile that day! Praise God! And people think prayer doesn't work! So now his tune changed. Instead of saying the baby would have to be born early he said that the baby needed to stay in as long as possible to keep growing healthy and strong...the day before he was suggesting we do steroid shots to develope the baby's lungs so that the baby could be born early...he thought that would be the best possible option because the risk of the baby being born stillborn was high. Well not anymore. We have a fighter on our hands! Well there is the long story...I'll write later on our news from our appointments since then. Until then....