The BIG Ultrasound

I am about 18 weeks along. Today our BIG ultrasound was scheduled. This is the super fun ultrasound, where you find out the gender of your baby, of course, if your baby is cooperative. With Jackson, I was pretty naive... I was just THRILLED about finding out the sex of our baby. Well at Jackson's big ultrasound, not only did we find out he was a boy (YAY!), we found out that he had cysts on his brain. As a new parent, that is NOT the news that you want to here. And although, God continually brought people into our lives that had similar circumstances, it was so difficult for us, until we found out in our 3rd trimester, that they had disappeared. It was a great day.

Since having Jackson, I have realized that having a completely healthy baby is 100% a miracle. I have become aware of numerous babies who have had many different health problems. My heart has always broken for their parents. I could not even begin to imagine how they were feeling and how they were hurting.

Baby Smith #2s big ultrasound was coming up, and although I was looking forward to finding out our baby's gender, I was feeling anxious. I had friends ask me why I thought I was so anxious.. I would remind them that we found out about Jacksons cysts on this ultrasound.. and it was a time where alot of parents found out about other health issues in their babies. They, of course, encouraged me that everything would be fine.

This morning I was EXTREMELY anxious about our appointment. When we got to the doctor, I told the ultrasound tech that I had been really anxious that morning. I assumed it was because I thought this baby may have cysts also. She, first looked at the babys brain. I asked her if there were cysts, there were NONE. YAY! I told her I wanted to hug her. She told us what she thought the baby was, printed some ultrasound pictures. And then printed off a few more. She ended our time by telling us that our doctor would go over the results with us. I kind of thought it was weird.

I went with my nurse and weighed.. ugh. I noticed that the ultrasound tech was sitting in Dr. Wilks office.. I thought that was strange too. When we got into our room, my nurse was taking my blood pressure. I asked her if it was high, because I had been so anxious that morning. She laughed at me, and told me not to worry, everything would be fine.

Dr. Wilks came in the office, and immediately cut to the chase. She said, I have some bad news. She had tears in her eyes. She said a whole bunch of things, that I didnt really understand. But what I did hear was that my baby has a hole in its stomach and some of its organs are outside of the body. She said it was a big deal. They were already on the phone with the high risk doctor, they wanted me to get in immediately, so we could get a plan in place. I told her, I just wanted to hear that I had a healthy baby. She left the room, Craig gave me a hug, and I started crying. My nurse came in, obviously feeling horrible that just a few minutes ago, she told me that my baby would be fine. She had no idea. She just hugged me...

Craig and I headed downstairs to the 3rd floor and waited FOREVER in the high risk doctors office. They are very thorough, which I appreciate.. and with the winter storm last week, they were already backed up. I just am glad they were willing to work me in. When we finally got called back, we were taken back to an ultrasound room. Our ultrasound tech was very nice, and really explained to us, EVERYTHING she was looking at. She measured our babys head, stomach, looked at our babys spine, etc. Everything was measuring fine. That was great news. It was also very obvious to us, this time, the masses that were floating that were not supposed to be there. She assumed that they were the babys intestines.

Then Dr. Stanley came in. He also did a very thorough ultrasound. He is a very nice man. Very straight forward, but gentle. Craig and I appreciated how he handled us and our baby. He agreed that everything was looking good. We looked at the brain, and he showed us how he didnt think the baby had spina bifida (spell?). Great news. He looked at our babys lip, and it showed no signs of cleft. He looked at the spine and said it looked good.. not like Downs Syndrome. All good news.

Then he looked at our problem area. He looked at it for a long time. He turned off the ultrasound machine and said he was going to move us to a different room and come in and tell us what he saw and what he didnt see.

We went to the other room. He came in and drew us three pictures. One was of the issue it could be that starts with a g.. I honestly cant rememeber what that word was. The next was called Omphalocele. I am going to do my best to describe these.. the word with the g means there is a hole in the abdomen and there are organs on the outside of the body. Omphalocele is more of a bulge, with some of the organs on the outside. It also means that there is a 30-50% chance that there is something else going on.. like a genetic abnormality. Well, our babys issue doesnt look like either one of these exactly. But it does look more like Omphalocele than the g word. The bulge is MUCH smaller than most. It does look like the umbilical cord is herniated also. Because the bulge is smaller, Dr. Stanley feels like there is a 2-5% chance that our baby has a genetic abnormality.

I will be going to the high risk doctor every 3 weeks to check on the baby's progress. I am also hoping that as the baby develops, Dr. Stanley will be able to tell more definitely what is going on. I will also continue seeing Dr. Wilks for my regular OB appointments.

We will meet with a pediatric surgeon within the next 8 weeks. What this means for me, is I will not be able to deliver vaginally like I had hoped, but will definitely have a c-section. I will not be able to deliver at Mercy.. which makes me sad.. they were such a blessing during our delivery with Jackson. But they dont do pediatric surgeries.. and our baby will definitely have at least one right after delivery. So, I will be delivering at either Baptist or OU. The good news is we have time to do our research about these hospitals and their NICUs.

What it means for our baby, is our baby will have a rough start. The baby will have at least one surgery to put the organs that are outside of the body, back in place. As our doctor said, he wants us to be optimistic, however, he wants us to have in the back of our head that things could be alot worse than we expect.

Craig and I believe in the power of prayer. And we believe that God can heal our baby. I dont know what that will look like.. but I will pray expecting for His will to be done in our baby's life. I ask you to pray and expect great things to be done, as far as the healing of our child goes. We feel blessed that we were able to find out about this now. If I had tried to deliver vaginally, not knowing about this problem, many many many more issues could have arisen. I feel confident in both of my doctors. I will NOT be doing research on this diagnosis. I will depend on my doctors to give me the information that is necessary. I trust that they will do that.

Right now, I am doing ok. Craig is being a rock... definitely being strong for me, I know. We are sad. And worried. There is absolutely nothing that we can do right now, other than pray and continue to lay our child's life in the hands of our loving Father. So thats what we are going to do. We are going to celebrate this life that I have growing inside of me.. what a tremendous blessing. And we will probably cry alittle too. :)

Our little family is incredibly blessed to have so many people already love our little baby. I know there are so many things going on in everyone's lives... but I do ask you, that when you think about it, please continue to pray for Baby Smith #2.