Saturday, February 27, 2010

3rd Post...Meeting with the Dr's

February 26Th
We met with the Genetic Counselor, had an ultrasound, met my OB or 1 of several High Risk Ob's that would be delivering, the Surgeon, had a fetal Echo and met with another Cardiologist = extremely long day. No lunch break for the pregnant lady. God blessed us with great patience and understan
ding that day :)

They further confirmed the Truncus Arteriosus (TA) diagnosis but they also said that it seems the baby may have something wrong with the Aortic Arch, this is pretty common with the TA,
Called an Interrupted Aortic Arch
. No definitive diagnosis of that yet.


http://www.pted.org/?id=interruptedarch1

Both of these diagnosis come with a
Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) which is a large hole inbetween the 2 bottom chamber which futher mixed the oxygenated blood(blue blood) with the red blood( i don't know what else to call the red blood but unoxygenated :)

I will be delivering the baby at U of M, hopefully naturally (aka not a C-section but with an epidural and anyother pain relief, as long as its safe for baby!) I am praying I do not need a C-Section or to be induced, since these days inductions tend to lead to many hours and possibly days of labor then a C-Section. A C-Section would be horrible, since I would have to recover from that, I would much rather be on my feet with my baby in the NICU before surgery, since surgery could happen as soon as days after deliver.

The baby will have surgery anywhere from 2day - a week after deliver. The hospital stay is expected to be a 4 weeks from the surgery date and the baby is expected to come home with a feeding tube to make sure he or she will be getting enough nourishment.

We are staying positive and we know that the lord has his hand in this and his will, will be done. There are still 9 weeks to go until my due date of May 1st. We can not sit here in doom and gloom until that day and we ask that our friends and family don't either.

Lets keep our spirits up and faith strong in the Lord, with whom anythings is possible!

We are so over joyed by this miracle of life and excited to hug and kiss our little Josiah LaRue or Alayna Michele.

Please pray for us. Pray the baby is ok, that I don't go into early labor since the baby needs to be fully developed and healthy for a successful surgery, pray I do not need a C-Section.

More to come as time goes on. Talk about a waiting game.

2nd Post...1st U of M Visit


January 19Th
, we finally had our appointment and found out they suspected the baby had a rare Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) called Truncus Arteriosus (TA). Below is a link to the U of M Mott Children's site, describing the CHD.


Normal Heart

Truncus Arteriosus (Type Unknown)

The peri
natal Dr. referred us to a peds. cardiologist who did a follow up fetal echo 2 days later and said to hold out on a diagnosis, until the baby's heart was larger than a finger nail, but that there is a CHD. He was very optimistic of successful treatment (surgery).

(There are 35 types of CHD's)

www.mottchildrenshospital.org/chc/patient_con_trun.html

TA is associated with a chromosomal defect called Di George Syndrome. Approximately 70% of TA patients have Di George, but we aren't not worrying about any of that at this point.

We transferred my care to U of M Mott Hospital. Justin and I felt so comfortable with that decision. Should any surgery be needed, we wanted it done there and how convenient for me to deliver there and the baby would be at the same facility, rather than me delivering in Dearborn and the baby transferred to Detroit.

We took the grandma's to the 1st appointment with the cardiologist at UofM. Oh how they were hoping to get a glimpse of something gender related during the echo, ha ha they didn't.

The cardiologist confirmed the first diagnosis and also stated something appears to be wrong with the aortic arch, the artery that pumps oxygenated blood throughout the body.

There are 3 types of TA, we will not know for sure what type we are dealing with. However, TA usually has other CHD's attached to it.

Most common is the Ventricular Septal Defect, VSD, which is the hole inbetween the bottom 2 chambers. There also seems to be something wrong with the Aortic Arch, they will know more at our next visit at the end of Feb.

We were all pretty shocked and devastated, however I was very happy to hear I would be able to hold the baby after deliver.

Soooooo, we made an appointment for later in February for more details.

1st Post....Baby Aikey Blog Update



God has blessed Justin and I will the beautiful miracle of a baby! I am currently 31 weeks and feeling great! We have kept the gender of the baby as a surprise. Meaning, we do not know what the sex is either, its so funny how people think we could hold onto the news of the sex and not tell them. Ha ha ha, we are not holding out. Everyone has been very patient with us and a little irritated but we think it's fun.

My pregnancy has been perfect. So far, no signs of diabetes, high blood pressure, excessive weight gain, nothing that would cause an concerns, I even lucked out of morning/ night sickness and nausea.
We had our big ultra sound in November at 17.5 weeks.

Photobucket


The ultrasound tech. detected something wrong with the heart, so we were referred to a perinatal specialist at Oakwood Dearborn for a fetal echo. They perform fetal echos no sooner than 22 weeks gestation, sooooooo we had to wait an entire month to even make the appointment.
The whole while, Justin and I kept this little news to ourselves. We didn't feel it was necessary to give bad news and get family worked up over possibly nothing.
We just prayed and put it into the back of our minds and we were going to deal with whatever the news was when the time came.