Short update on mom- I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and am now responsible for eating healthy foods and pricking my fingers to test blood sugar levels four times a day. After weeks of inability to get control over my morning fasting levels (too many hormones I guess) they have now put me on medication to bring blood sugar levels down overnight. The medication works great....number one side effect...nausea. Welcome back morning sickness- can't say I missed you that much. Top it off with a very nasty chest cold and you end up with one mama who has had enough doctors, treatments, opinions, lectures, medications and tiny, boring portions of healthy food to last a life time. Still wouldn't trade a moment of it for the precious baby boy growing inside, but he could sure be a little easier on me!
Our last trip over to Children's Hospital was very special. Kelly had me wait for the "good" machine and as I lingered in the hallway, I began flirting with the cutest baby boy in a stroller. I commented to his mom," He looks so new, how many weeks is he?" She informed me (nicely) that he was 3 months old. After I pulled my foot out of my mouth (duh, remember where you are!) we began chatting and she shared that he was a hypoplastic right heart baby by the name of Kyle. We chatted about Emmett for a minute and immediately bonded (while Kyle is making googly eyes at me and smiling the whole time) and she showed me his chest scar and let me know he was on his way to prepare for surgery number two. We both got called away but realized we would probably see each other again due to our babies' circumstances. I thought of Kyle this morning, since his surgery was yesterday. Our prayers are with him.
The echo went great. Kelly is still the Superman of technicians. He told me right off that he pulled another child's file and compared it to our file and that all the measurements and circumstances matched perfectly. I asked if it was a child with coarctation of the aorta and he said, "Yup, that's why I compared them. I think we're narrowing it down." Hooray!! That's great news for us. We even had a moment of looking at the aortic arch on the screen where you could see where it had started to narrow. My confidence in the situation grows every time I go there.
Kaiser, on the other hand, would make me laugh if they weren't burning through my deductible at a phenomenally fast rate for nothing. I've had two ultrasounds with two different "specialists" there, on really crappy equipment where you can barely make out the heart, and each doctor has given me a different diagnosis (neither of which are actually the problem). One doctor is sure that its Aortic Stenosis- Kelly rolled his eyes when I shared that one and showed me three different things on the screen that meant it wasn't. The latest "specialist" this week was certain that the problem is the mitral valve, the valve that Kelly always tells me looks fantastic and is CLEARLY not the cause of the problem. I love that these doctors spend 2 minutes looking at a bad ultrasound, talk to me about the problem as if I've NEVER talked to a doctor about it before, spit out a bad diagnosis, then read the charts from Children's Hospital. On top of it all, they get to charge me hundreds of dollars for this. For this reason, I have decided to cancel my next ultrasound with them. What are they going to do, fire me?
Despite how rough the last couple of weeks have been on me, they have been great for Emmett. He is measuring around 2 weeks bigger than he should be at 33 weeks, which they attribute to the gestational diabetes (I'm not sure I do, though, since my scores haven't been really high). Since he'll be coming by c-section anyway, I say, the bigger the better. A bigger heart has a bigger chance of functioning well and if surgery is required, bigger is still better. They're projecting 9 1/2 lbs, which would be unusually large for our family. Brett was 8'15" and he was over a week late. These days, I'm trusting God's hand in everything. He has made this journey bearable and I have no doubt He will get us through the next 6 weeks no matter what happens...which will hopefully involve less sickness, better food, better sleep and at least one more pedicure because I CAN'T REACH MY TOES!
Beautiful photo and thank you for sharing your story. It is such a great reminder of God's grace and I am sure He is holding you & baby Emmett in His hands with great care. Love you!
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