Baby Update

We have had a series of appointments this week, the first one was with Dr. Porter the ultrasound doctor to check her growth. He said everything looked great, she was measuring 3lb. 10 oz approximately, I will have 1 more ultrasound in 4 weeks, the doc was very encouraged that she was right on track for 32 weeks.

The next appointment was with my regular ob Dr. Loewen, we originally though we would have her on March 29th which would put me at 38 weeks, but the ultrasound doctor wanted us to wait till I was 39 weeks so we are tentatively looking at Tuesday April 3rd up at the U of U hospital. As long as everything goes well with delivery I will not have to have a c-section, and should be able to deliver normally.

Our third appointment was with Dr. McCandles the cardiologist for our final fetal echo-cardiogram. There were some new developments, before there was just a little narrowing in part of the aortic arch, but that has now progressed to the whole length of the aortic arch is narrow. What is means is that they will now have to open up her chest through the sternum and repair the arch that way. The other concern is that the aortic valve is narrow as well, the way this is fixed is by inserting a cathader with a balloon on the end and then they inflate the balloon to widen the aorta, and then remove the cathader. They are not sure if they are going to do this surgery they will have to wait until she's born to see how the blood flows and if it is being limited by the narrowness of the aorta. The doctor assured us that this surgery is not high risk, and that these are both "easy" problems to fix. We feel confident that she will be in good hands and the Lord will be watching over her.

We also took a tour of Primary Children's (PC) hospital and the tentative plan is as follows We will have the baby at the U and with in the first few hours she will be taken next door to PC and stay in the cardiac ICU, she will have a IV put that will allow the blood to flow to pass by the narrow part until she has the surgery with in her first week of life. Once she is born they will do a echo-cardiogram on her and measure the blood flow to make sure they are as prepared as possible. After the surgery she will stay in the cardiac ICU for at least a week then move to a regular hospital room for another week. Provided she eats well and has no complications we will be able to leave after the two weeks post surgery.

Sorry I know this is a long, but we wanted to give you all the details. Thanks for all your love and support.