Welcome to our Blog!

Baby Ben, picture of a picture

We have decided to start blogging to keep everyone up to date on what is going on in our lives. Some of you may know that on Monday, April 23rd we received the shock of our life. Our unborn baby, Benjamin Mark has fluid in his chest, thats going to cause a lot of problems. I will just catch everyone up if you have not heard the story from start to finish.
The entire weekend before I was just not feeling well, and thought I may have been leaking amniotic fluid. I called the physician on call and he told me to go to Labor and Delivery just to be safe. There they did a test to see if I was leaking. The test came back inconclusive, so she said to go see my regular doctor, Dr Stephens first thing in the morning. So thats what I did. While there, he performed several tests to make sure I was not in pre-term labor (I was 24 weels) and to check my amniotic fluid level to see if it was low. All of the things I went to the doctor about were normal (normal fluid, long cervix), but on the ultrasound they noticed he had fluid in his chest. I have never heard of anyone having this so I was real confused and kind of shocked. He told us this was bad news and that things like this are linked to Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders, or could be caused by some sort of infection that was not healthy to the baby.
He immediately scheduled us an appointment with a Maternal Fetal Specialist in Columbus. There we learned a little more about what this could be, basically all bad news, and the kind of problems he could face for the rest of his life. He said that he reccommended three things, amniocentesis, genetic counseling, and a visit to a pediatric cardiologist, in addition to blood work to check for infection.
We have done all three of these things and all have good news! Our amnio came back normal which means no Downs, or any other genetic disorder, and the visit to the pediatric cardiologist proved that he had no heart defect and his heart was all accounted for and beating strong. The blood work from me, and the amniotic fluid showed no signs of any infections so that is another positive thing.
We went back to the fetal specialist yesterday to kind of regroup and talk about the results and see where we go from here. So what we know now is we do not know what is causing the fluid. The technical term is a unilateral pleural effusion, meaning a buildup of fluid on one side of his lungs. In our case, it is the right. The fluid is pushing his heart over a little to the left but currently not causing problems. The concern is that if the fluid gets any bigger it could start causing problems with the heart, so we are going to continue to keep a real close eye on it. Another concern is the right lung. It is signifcantly smaller than it should be because of the fluid, it has no room to grow. So what that means is that unless they end up having to shunt (drain), or it miraculously goes away that I will deliver in Atlanta at Eggleston and he will be in the NICU with all sorts of assistance.
The fetal Specialst (Dr Hill) said that sometimes when you see a isolated part of the body retaining fluid, it is not uncommon for other parts to start doing it as well. So that is another reason we are keeping a close eye on this. When I get in the 3rd trimester, we will go to Scottish Rite for a fetal MRI and that will be able to give us more indication of what could be causing this, and to make sure there are no other problems going on that we cannot see on ultrasound. We are scheduled at the fetal specialist every week so I will keep updating on here so everyone can be in the loop.

Right now, for me, there is nothing I can do to make this any better, and if you know me, this is the hardest part. I am constantly wondering and second guessing myself (why did I eat that turkey at subway? was I too stressed? was it the progesterone?), but ultimately I know there is nothing we can do and just hope this all works out for the best. What we do ask is everyone be thinking about us, praying for us, and sending us well wishes, because this is a very hard time.

And about the picture, give us a break, were new at blogging. We will get it together :)