Yet Another Update

Omg, like I am getting sick of talking about this pregnancy right now, but I should update on our appointment at St. Mark's. I was a little nervous about it, because the surgeons are kind of my be all end all opinion on whether or not we do the surgery and I just have no loved the idea of doing some big experimental surgery on the boys. So anyways, I managed to con Justin into taking the morning off work (I know that doesn't sound like a big deal, but Justin doesn't take time off work. Ever. He is the Old Faithful of the architectural world.) and we took Addison too, since she apparently was in the mood to see more pictures of "Baby Brother". So we headed up and saw them right away. It went pretty well. First of all, we ad a new ultrasound tech and she was a peach. After she took the regular measurements and looked at the heart and all that business, she pulled out the 3D camera and took some pictures of the healthy twin. I was SO EXCITED. I am not even joking, I've probably looked at the pictures roughly a billion times. It probably sounds weird, but after Monday I was not feeling so great about this whole ordeal and feeling awfully sorry for myself. After seeing the baby I feel like I've got that last little pus to get us through the next nine weeks. Can you believe it? Somewhere between now and nine weeks the babies will be born. So. Weird.

ANYHOW (can we say tangent?) Dr. Ball came in and he looked for a good long time. I didn't even faint! I told him that I'm a fainter, so he let me do some of the ultrasound tipped up a little bit. He was concerned about the amount of fluid around the babies, and explained that the way a baby regulates the fluid around them is through swallowing, and since I only had one baby pulling his load, the acardiac twin wasn't swallowing and therefore, the excess fluid. It's not at a concerning level yet, but it's creeping up and we may have to consider action if it's deepest pocket hit 10 cm. It's at about 7.5 right now. So we'll see. The healthy twin still looks good, Dr. Ball noticed that his heart was working hard, but it was to be expected given the circumstances. After the ultrasound we went back to his office and discussed everything. He basically said he doesn't see a reason to do the surgery when the healthy twin looks so good (YES! YES!) and that we would just keep an eye on it. He mentioned the possibility of a surgery at 28 weeks (I'm 25 right now, for those who are keeping track) just as a "see what happens" type surgery, where we could deliver the babies if it didn't go well. But it's still up in the air. I would still prefer to just leave them and deliver at the first sign of distress when I'm in the hospital, but we'll see. Dr. Ball said several times that the fact that we were even sitting in his office, calmly discussing this, and not totally wheeling me off to surgery right then was a great, great sign. So I feel good.

I have another appointment tomorrow (of course) for monitoring and ultrasounds and to discuss Dr. Ball's findings with my main doctors down here. As for the threat of heart failure due to the acardiac twin, we are slowly coming out of the woods as far as danger goes. If we had to deliver now, the baby would have about a 60-70% chance of survival. The thing we're watching out for now is any kind of cord entanglement due to the twins being in the same sac together. The farther along we get, the less of a threat that is. So we're just sitting tight here. Keep the prayers coming!

Finally, here's the pictures of our little boy, who is not named *cough*Andrew*cough*. I'm sure everyone has already seen them because quite frankly, I have literally shown EVERYONE in the last 24 hours... but just in case.

Can I also point out that my mother thought that there was a second hand HOLDING the baby from the inside in that second picture? While I admit it slightly resembles some person's hand, I'll assure you that no, some random person is not in my uterus holding my baby. Sorry to disappoint.