Back to UVA....again

A quick (I promise) update from our household:

First a piece of good news: as of yesterday we passed our final building inspections on the room out front. We intentionally tried to plan that for yesterday knowing that today’s appointment could send us in a new direction yet once again. It feels great to both of us to feel like this one small hurdle is past us. We are not exactly close to done yet but we now have the ability to choose when we want to move in and no longer have to deal with scheduling inspections. One thing behind us! We have decided together that we will not move in before the baby and likely will wait until we are very close to, if not completely, done. For one, I want to be able to help. And, more importantly, it just doesn’t feel like such a huge priority in the light of other developments of the last month or two.

We had a full ultrasound this morning that showed some good things: 8/8 Biophysical, good forward Doppler flow, and even some better looking black pockets of amniotic fluid (up slightly measuring about 6.6cm). However, her growth is still very, very behind and not even keeping up with her own curve. Her mid-section has really shown no growth since our last UVA ultrasound putting her about 5-6 weeks behind. Her weight is still less than 3lbs.

I feel like a broken record but once again we felt unprepared for the next step. After feeling slightly encouraged by the good things on the ultrasound report, since we didn’t really expect much growth, we were not ready to be sent to UVA yet today. We head there for a 3pm appointment in which they will do another ultrasound and then we will meet with yet another doctor we haven’t met with yet to talk about the remaining prenatal care we need to receive. At this point it does not seem that the recommendation will be for immediate induction but that we are likely going to be making more frequent trips to UVA and back until the time for delivery is determined.

I imagine we’ll send another update this weekend with what we learn today but I thought I’d send this out awhile for those of you following our updates closely and so that anyone who checks email before 3pm today can be thinking of us as we once again have this little one closely assessed.

We’re hanging in there, Janelle (for Jason and Kali too)

Ps. A more practical request – if any of you receiving these emails have close connections with persons who had premature babies and would want to do any scouting for us in terms of hand-me-down preemie clothes we would welcome that. I’m not able to go out and scour second hand stores and the online looking we have done has been very discouraging in terms of how much you can spend on very bare bones preemie clothing.

7:30pm: We are home from UVA and winding down for the day. It was a record appointment in terms of time – in and out in less than 2 hours (but still a 5 plus hour stint with travel time). No matter what happens at these appointments, Jason and I both feel a bit drained emotionally and physically after them. Kali once again had a wonderful afternoon playing with her little playmate next door (Reese). We are so very grateful for our neighbors, Ben and Leslie, who have graciously opened their home to Kali many times recently, and on short notice like today. Kali enjoys playing with Reese, but is equally fond of holding their baby Hunter.

Our UVA appointment was helpful in that we got to meet the 3^rd of the 4 doctors who could be with us during the birth of our little girl. Dr. Blattman was as gracious with his time and our questions as the previous two doctors had been. He was also the most humorous of all the ones we have met with so far. My dad dared me to put one of his quotes in this update letter, but I think I’ll refrain.

Their recommendation is that we continue as we have been, with only one slight modification and that is that we have no more ultrasounds at Shenandoah but just go there for our NST’s. We will do that twice this week and then if all goes well with those, we will move forward with our Monday UVA appointment on October 22^nd. We will have an ultrasound there again at that point and then will schedule our induction and meet with someone in their prenatal clinic.

They did not do any measurements today as they feel like doing measurements in a span of less than every 3-4 weeks does not provide any helpful data. The fact that she is giving them all the signs that she is quite happy inside is all they need at this point (as we are just approaching 35 weeks) to determine that she is still better off inside of me for another week or two to continue developing, even if she is hardly growing at all, if any.

It seems that we have lots of puzzle pieces but they don’t make a very neat put-together puzzle at this point. So we will continue to wait and I get to continue to monitor fetal movement closely in between appointments.

We are looking forward now to a weekend at home together and a visit from my Mom tomorrow and Sunday. I can’t say that I’m doing great with the “bed rest” thing when I spend all day going to various appointments. I look forward to several days at home with no scheduled appointments.

Well, Kali is busy blowing kisses to Jason so maybe I’ll see if I can divert her kisses to me so Jason can read over this update and then we’ll send it off to all of you. Janelle