The Diagnosis

So I've never blogged before, but figured it might be a good way to keep family and friends informed on what's going on with the baby. I also thought it might be a way to keep me from going insane over these next couple of months while we're awaiting her birth. I apologize in advance for my less than stellar writing and spelling skills.....



I laugh now thinking back to New Years Eve, when Josh and I were reminiscing about the past ten years (We got together in Jan 2000). We were saying how many ups and downs, and heartaches, and joys we've had, and how we've managed to stick together and have a marriage and friendship that most people dream about. I then said that this decade was going to be amazing and even better than the last. Well four days later he lost his job of ten years, and we had no savings, a 1700 dollar a month mortgage and found myself 5 months pregnant with no health insurance. Josh said no big deal I'll start my own business, which he's been wanting to do for the longest time, he just was afraid to due to the fact that it was a big risk with owning a home, and having 3 kids and one on the way. I finally felt better, and things were starting to look up again, I couldn't wait for the baby to come, and we were so ecstatic that it was a girl (it's what everyone wanted).
I got a call from my doctor saying there was a problem with my bloodwork. I am RH negative, which normally doesn't cause a problem unless you're pregnant. They give you a shot of rho-gam during pregnancy, which is supposed to stop your body from producing antibodies against the baby, apparently mine didn't work (surprise surprise) and I had developed the antibodies. Apparently this only happens in 2% of pregnancies (lucky me), but does not usually pose a problem with this pregnancy (the biggest risk is anemia), but could pose a problem with future pregnancies. I didn't see this as a big deal anyways because we weren't planning on having anymore anyways. They set me up an appointment to talk to the fetal medicine doctor about it and that was that.

Last Thursday I went there thinking ok no big deal this should be a simple appointment. They gave me a routine ultrasound while I was there and thinking back nothing sticks out about it that would make me think something was wrong. She finished up and said ok the doc will be in to talk to you, I figured about the RH thing. It did seem to take them forever to come back in, which I did think was unusual because it was 5:00 and I figured they can't be that busy. Josh and I were laughing and making jokes as we always do, when he came in and sat down and said well I'll explain the RH thing in a moment because it's fairly simple, but we have something else going on that's not so simple. He then went on to explain that there was fluid backed up around the brain and that it's something called hydrocephalus. He said there was a 99% chance she would need a shunt when she was born to drain the fluid and thet he couldn't tell us what the outcome was because every case was different and it all depended on what the cause was too. He told us he didn't think it was something genetic (all my ultrasounds up until that point were normal), he said it could of been caused by an infection or aqueductal stenosis (I'll explain all this medical stuff in a later post) He set me up an aminio to rule out abnormalities, and a fetal MRI I guess to get a better picture of the baby's brain and see if they can see anything distinct that could be causeing the blockage.