Thursday, June 2, 2011

Week 23 Doc Appt.

Saw the midwife again today - or normal appointment for the month. We didn't really learn anything new however since our appointment on Tuesday at the specialist, we had a few more questions we were hoping she would be able to answer. Which she was able to.

Some of the questions we had...

Does this classify my pregnancy as "high risk?" Yes! I assumed that this was the answer but I wanted to hear it from a professional.

At what point is the pregnancy considered viable? 24 weeks - which we hit on Sunday. Granted, we want to keep him in as long as possible, but if something comes up, I am relieved to know that we won't necessarily loose him because he is born to early.

If my fluid levels drop and we have to have him early, will we have to have him by c-section? Not necessarily. Because I didn't have a c-section with Addison, chances are they would try a vaginal delivery first. I worry though that a vaginal delivery on a severally premature baby will be too stressful to him - I guess that is a question I should have but I didn't think about it until we were done with Tammi.

If my fluid level does drop and we have to have him early, will we be able to have him here in Panama City, or will we be forced to go elsewhere? It depends on how small he is. If he is born less than 2 pounds, we will have to go to Pensacola because Panama City does not have a level 3 neo-natal ICU. Therefor none of the hospitals in our area would be able to care for such a tiny baby. If he weighs more than 2 pounds, we can have him here in town at the hospital we would have had him at anyway.

Because we will see the specialist once a month, should we stagger our appointments with her so we are seeing someone every two weeks? YES! So we will start seeing someone every two weeks starting at the end of June. This makes me feel so much better because now I won't have to wait for a month between appointments.

If, on the off chance he has to have a kidney transplant, how soon after he is born would we do that? Again, it would depend. If he needed both kidneys, we would have to find a doner and do it as soon as we could. If he only needed one transplant, we could probably wait since he can go without one kidney.

And again, thank heavens my husband was with me - she didn't have any of the test results back from the specialists office and wanted to know how that appointment had gone. She began to ask me and I was like a deer in headlights! For whatever reason, I just couldn't open my mouth and speak. Luckily, Chuck jumped right in and was able to take over for me. He is really the one that was able to soak in all the information on Tuesday anyway, so it was probably best that he did do the talking. I told Tammi - our midwife - that if it weren't for him, I would not have had any answers for her and that I was in complete lala land at the appointment on Tuesday. What I like about Tammi is that she totally gets it - she understood why I was in a haze and didn't expect me to answer her. Such a relief!

We are in a much better place than we were on Tuesday since we have had time to process all the information. We understand that this could be so much worse - like life threatening - and we are incredibly grateful it isn't anything that can't be fixed with a surgery. Even though the surgery on a newborn makes me sooooo apprehensive, I know we will do what we have to and we will get through it. And I am hearing from many friends who have had boys who have had very similar issues with them and so I am trying to talk to them, which seems to be making me feel better. Who knew this was such a common issue in boys?

Next specialist appointment has been changed to June 30th. Next regular appointment is July 12th.

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