June 19th

June 19th- I had my typical appointment of getting an ultrasound, although this took quite awhile today.  Eric went along for today's appointment.  After the tech did the typical ultrasound, she came back in and said the doctor wanted her to get some additional shots of the heart and get a few recordings of different heart sounds.  So she came in and did that.  Then the doctor came in and wanted to do another ultrasound to look at a few things himself.  So I had ultrasound number 3 for the day.

He told us that he is pretty confident from today's ultrasound and looking back at previous ones that the baby actually has an omphalocele instead of gastroschisis.  He said it has held more of a consistent shape and that usually the gastroschisis looks more like spaghetti floating around versus the rounded shape.  He did say it is off to the right of the umbilical cord which is typical for gastroschisis, but is still thinking it is an omphalocele.  He confirmed that the only thing in the omphalocele is bowel and no organs appear to be in the omphalocele.  He said that the size of the omphalocele is not likely to change other than size relative to the baby.  In a nutshell, this means that the bowel that is in a protective membrane so it is not subject to the amniotic fluid the way that the intestines are with gastroschisis.  This is a positive, however, omphaloceles are very often connected with other genetic issues, specifically heart or spinal issues, whereas gastroschisis is a chance thing that is not genetically related.  We are hopeful that we aren't looking into any major genetic issues.  Nothing in the ultrasounds we have had show any real need for concern.  They have done lots of looking at the heart and haven't seen anything that concerns them. 

The doctor made it sound like the plan for the birth and after would be similar- C-section followed by surgery.  He gave a little more detail into the actual C-section in terms of how long it will take and when we will schedule.  He said roughly start to finish will be about 1 hour and that we will schedule it for between weeks 37 and 38.  We are still going every two weeks for appointments and ultrasounds at this point.  This doctor did make us feel a little more nervous about pre-term labor and said we have a higher probability than a typical pregnancy and stated multiple times that I should not do too much, but at the same time, I asked if there was anything I shouldn't be doing and he told me to just keep doing what I'm doing. 

It sounds like 32 weeks will be a big week for us, we will meet with neonatalogy again that week, we will meet the pediatric surgeon or surgeons that will be working on our baby, and we will schedule the date for the C-section.  We will also be able to set up a tour of the NICU so we have an idea of what to expect when we get there.  Our next appointment is Monday, July 2nd and I will be 28 weeks.