Tuesday Update

Well, I'm still here! This has been day 6 in the hospital. We have been able to talk with a few different doctors over the past couple of days, which has been helpful. We are beginning to get a little bit of a better idea about how this all may play out.

We got some good news from the cardiologist today. They did another ECHO on the baby's heart and then we had a consult. It appears that the baby's Tetralogy of Fallot is not terribly severe. This is very good news. The cardiologist hopes that his little heart will work well enough by itself to not require surgery or medication right away. He will need surgery to fix the 4 things that are wrong with his heart, but it appears that he will be able to make it to about 6 months of age before they do the big open heart surgery to fix everything. This is great news because one of our major concerns was his having to have an operation right away.

As far as the hydrocephalus goes, it is on the mild side and the neurologist does not anticipate needing to put a shunt in or any other intervention right away. They will do a CAT scan on his brain when he is born and monitor things, but if anything needs to be done it should be able to wait until we get home to Seattle.

For the stomach and bladder problems, they will both need surgery to correct what is wrong. But our impression at this point is that they will not need to be done immediately either.

All good news. The doctors hope to prolong the pregnancy for another 2 weeks (correction: 3 weeks). At that point our little guy will go to the NICU and stay there for as long as it takes him to grow and develop more. But at this point it looks like any major procedures that will need to be done will wait until we return home.

We have heard a few of the doctors speculate about chromosomal disorders and have heard them name a couple of them. We will not know if that is what we are dealing with for sure until the baby is born and they can do some tests. We will know soon.

We took a tour of the NICU yesterday. It was good to see where our little guy would spend the first few weeks of his life. There was a baby in there that was 32 weeks along when he was born. So tiny. It is amazing what medical technology can do!

Justin has been working remotely from the hospital this week. He will return to Seattle soon to go to work and tie up a few loose ends there. I sure hope that this little baby stays put while Justin is gone! And we are still trying to figure out what to do about Brandon's schooling. We may end up enrolling him here. So many things to figure out!

We are taking things one day at a time now. With all of the uncertainty we feel peace. And we are anxious to meet this special little boy. We appreciate all of the thoughts and prayers of so many on behalf of our family!