Finding out

On February 3rd we had a positive pregnancy test followed by our first prenatal consult on March 7th and prenatal appointment on March 8th.  Everything moved along normally, Sara saw the midwives and she was able to skip the gestational diabetes test (yay!), because of morning sickness (not yay).  We had a dating ultrasound on March 29th and we were told our due date was September 22nd.  After another appointment, morning sickness began to subside and we went to the typical 20-week sonogram. After the sonogram one of the midwives came in, after a longer than typical wait, and said that the sonogram technician believed they saw an omphalocele. She gave us some information about omphaleceles and we were told that maternal-fetal medicine would call us the next week with an appointment for a follow up Level-2 sonogram.  Essentially, this is a head-to-toe sonogram that is much more detailed and comprehensive than the typical 20-week sonogram where they would look at the (possible) omphalocele and look at everything else more closely.

After the appointment we went home and talked about what we heard at the appointment and went to our computers to look up information on omphalocele. During our reading we also read about a related condition called gastroschisis, but largely ignored this condition.

After internal-fedal medicine called we had an appointment date: May 21. At the appointment the doctor changed the diagnosis from omphalocele to gastroschisis. She said that this was a good change, which we somewhat disagreed with.  Essentially, in the case of an omphalocele the organs are outside the abdomen, but still protected by a membrane; where as gastroschisis the organs float freely in the amniotic fluid.  However, omphaloceles can also be associated with other genetic abnormalities such as heart defects, which is not the case for gastroschisis.  The doctor looked at the heart closely and found no issues, which was great news.

After the confirmation of a gastroschisis we were told that we would need to switch from the midwives to maternal-fetal medicine as they handle these cases better compared to the midwives. We would also have bi-weekly sonograms to check the status of the baby. Furthermore, we learned that our hospital could not effectively handle delivering babies with a gastroschisis and that we would need to deliver in Peoria (a town 1.5 hours away) in their children's hospital.  Basically, a baby with a gastroschisis requires a pediatric surgeon to reinsert the organs into the abdomen.  After that, the baby will need to stay in the NICU for recovery from a few weeks to a few months.