A Surprising New Journey

We are adding to our family! 

Although I'm not sure how much of a surprise this is. 

Most of you who read this already know and I've already updated the page with a ticker and it's on the little calender thing. 

It's been kind of a roller coaster ride, because nothing is simple in this house! 

We are due January 14th. So, yes that means I'm almost 31 weeks and I've about 65ish days left!

Here's a hopefully short synopsis of what's been going:

We found out near the end of May that we were expecting again.

We had our first ultrasound at 13 weeks. I honestly can't remember why they did it, maybe to get a better idea of the exact due date or to help monitor future growth. Things looked really good at this point, lots of movement. 

Since Luke and I are both carriers for I-cell and we went about getting pregnant "in the usual way" at 15 weeks we had to see a prenatal geneticist for a consult. There is a 25% that any of our children will have I-cell but this also means there is a 75% that they would be healthy.

At 15 weeks we opted to have an amniocentesis done. We also had another ultrasound at this point to check growth and to look for any possible abnormalities. We got a big surprise that day and found out that we are having a BOY! I had wanted the gender to be a surprise this time around but he had other ideas and made it very obvious to us! Things looked really good at this ultrasound too, he had a lot of strong movement so much that the tech could feel it too! The amnio itself was pretty painful and much to Amber's dismay made me take it easy for a couple of days.

20 weeks is when things really changed for us. Up until this point we had a really good, positive feeling about this pregnancy;over all everything was going well, he looked good on all the ultrasounds and I was feeling a lot of strong movement. Then we got the call that we were not expecting. He also has I-cell. We were devastated, it was just so unexpected. Things were so different when I was pregnant with Amber it was very hard and had so many complications. I always felt like maybe there was something wrong with her and I ended up being right. This time around has been so easy and uncomplicated that the diagnosis was really a shock to us.
 I think I prefer knowing now before he's born than finding out afterwards like we did with Amber. Although I can't really say it's been any easier getting this diagnosis a second time. Especially since we technically knowingly gave this child I-cell, it tends to make one feel like a bad person/parent. 

At 20 weeks we finally told the rest of our family and all friends that we were expecting, we wanted to wait until after we had the amnio results. At this point we also switched to a high risk ob office in Boston. We also had another ultrasound that showed everything looked good  and he was on track growth wise.

 We had another appointment and ultrasound at 24 weeks. I also had my glucose test, no gestational diabetes for this chick! He was still on track growth wise and looking good.

Per the request of Amber's cardiologist, who will also be this little man's cardiologist, we had a fetal echo done. This was at 26 weeks, I don't have any pictures from it but I'm happy to say at this point his heart looks totally perfect. It's in the right spot, all the valves and everything else looks good. This doesn't mean he's totally in the clear for no heart problems unfortunately. If you remember Amber's heart status/severity changed rapidly in the first year. 

This is the baby's face....

At 28 weeks things changed for us again. Our ultrasound showed that he is now behind in growth. It really wasn't that much of a surprise to us. We knew it was a matter of time and we went through the same thing with Amber. However with Amber we caught it later in the pregnancy and she actually came (unexpectedly) 2 days after we found out so never had the chance to monitor it. The little man had quite a big drop in size in the 4 weeks between appointments. At our 24 week appointment he was in the 31st percentile and at 28 weeks he had dropped to the 7th. Our Ob is/was very concerned, especially since he doesn't move a ton (also something we went through with Amber) and at this appointment told me that she didn't expect him to make it to the end of the pregnancy and they would consider delivery if he were a "normal" baby. Of course I am concerned about his drop in size and I would like to monitor it but I am not concerned that he might not make it. Unfortunately when there is a lack of information on a disease you tend to run into these types of situations, like Amber's last E.R. visit. It's your classic case of if the OB listened to me/Amber's geneticist or read the chart they might not have said those things.

We had another appointment yesterday at 30 weeks which confirmed (much to our Ob's surprise) that our little man was indeed alive! This means, starting tomorrow, I'll be going in weekly or so for ultrasounds to check on his growth. As long as he doesn't have anymore significant drops and stays on his own growth curve we can continue on like normal. 

 We have learned to much from Amber and she brings so much joy to our lives that we can't wait to see what our little man has in store for us. It's going to be in interesting new journey for us!