May 5th Update

Today I met with my specialist as well as another high-risk specialist. (I liked mine so much more!) She is happy to see that my blood pressure is looking good and thinks that the bedrest is helping it to stay down and that she recommends that I be downgraded to a regular room where I will be monitored every 4 hours as opposed to every hour. (Sounds good to me, only a couple middle of the night wakeup checks as opposed to what I've been doing.) She recommends that I still deliver but understands my decision and respects it. My blood and urine tests have all come back negative for pre-eclampsia so they are sticking to the Mirror Syndrome diagnosis for now. Given that, they won't consider releasing me until I deliver and asked if I understood that I could be here for a long time. I told her the longer I am here the better chances Aaron has and will do what I can for him. She was concerned about the stress it would cause our family and our children especially not having Mom at home. I told her we had great family and friends who are stepping in to help out and we will do our best to maintain peace at home and help our children through this crazy time. Its good to know that she is thinking about the big picture, not just me and the baby but the rest of our family.

We also talked about Aaron and what we want to do once he meets the 400 gram threshold. To put things in perspective, a normal baby with normal fluid and no hydrops would have a small chance at survival at 400 grams but significantly better at 500 grams. So our little guy has two strikes against him already. The one good thing about Aaron's prognosis is that I am almost 30 weeks along. Although he is measuring significantly behind in growth, he is helped by the fact that his brain and heart and other organs have the added benefit of maturity. Does that offset the other mitigating factors? The answer is, they just don't know how much it helps but it does help some. So she and I talked about what we wanted to see happen and what a good decision would be once we met the 400 gram threshold. I told her that if it were up to me alone I would say lets get to 400 grams and re-evaluate where we are. If my health continues to be stable and he continues to show signs that he still has fight in him then lets set a new goal of 500 grams. If we reach that and things still look ok we shoot for 600 grams and so forth. The concern with this is that we are running out of time for him to grow and for my placenta to still function. If we get to the 400 gram mark and we see that he is struggling then we will decide if the NICU is the right place for him and if doing the "classic c-section" is better than doing an induction. I asked when the next ultrasound would be and she said 3 weeks. That seems like an eternity but if we can get to 3 weeks, hopefully we will have better options ahead of us. One day at a time, really thats the plan.

I also asked about visitors in the new room and we are told I can have visitors during visitor hours. I asked about my kids and were told that the only children allowed to visit are my own and that in order for them to come we have to show proof of immunization against measles. I told her no problem there, it will be nice to see them and give them hugs. I've been doing my best to facilitate daily routines from here over the phone and so far the kids seem to be back to a normal routine. This of course will all change when they go off track in two weeks but we'll figure that out when the time comes. Ronny is doing his best to juggle everything. He is torn between feeling like he needs to be here, at home with the kids, and at work. He is doing so much and I pray he has the endurance to keep it up. He is one amazing husband and father and I am lucky to have him!