Some good news

There's our beautiful baby girl.

Patrick and I had a follow-up visit at CHOP today, two weeks out from the laser surgery, and were unsure what we might learn. Last week, the cardiologist was really hoping to see some improvement and instead saw that things looked a little worse one week after the surgery, so we were just praying that there would be some small step in the right direction this week.

We saw the OB technician for our anatomy scan first, and she was happy to tell us that Brigid was measuring right on track for her dates, whereas before she had been measuring a little large for her dates because of the excess fluid her body was trying to process. Her abdomen had been enlarged, and this week it looked just right. She looked beautiful, and both the technician and the OB specialist seemed encouraged.

Then we had our cardiology scan, which checked the blood flow in her brain, her umbilical cord, and her heart. The technician takes a series of doppler measurements, which show up as waves on the screen, but of course we had no idea how to interpret these and 30+ minutes of wave readings had us biting our lips wondering if they were better or worse.

They brought us into the consultation room afterward to meet with the doctor, and we just prayed yet again that she'd have made a change in the right direction. The doctor smiled as he told us that he saw significant improvement over what we had seen last week. He explained that there is still some mild thickening, and a little bit of leakage across the valves, but when I asked, "But it is looking a little bit better?" he said, "Not just a little bit - she's about 90 percent of the way to where we want her to be." Patrick and I just grabbed each other's hands and said, "Thank you, God!" The doctor explained that if we had continued where we had been last week, he'd have suggested we might want to deliver the baby at CHOP for the extra cardiac care she would need, but that this was such a significant change in the right direction that he didn't feel we needed to come back for another month and possibly not at all after that if things still looked good.

I am still on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy because of the separation of her amniotic sac, but we are thanking the Lord for answered prayers and a good report for our baby girl!