Not a whole lot to report these days, just wanted to give a little bit of update on how things are going with Mr. Hennebaby-5. I saw Dr. S (my family doctor) late last week and found out that little Mr's heart rate was a nice steady 150bpm; Dr. S found it immediately, putting me very much at ease.
We have had our first appointment to get to meet the staff at Roger's House - the palliative care facility that will be following us at CHEO (Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario). Things went well, everyone we met was incredibly nice. We will be meeting with them again soon to discuss things such as how to tell the kids that the "new baby" that they are so excited for is not doing very well and might never come home. We were also told that, regardless of whether or not we choose to have medical interventions performed, they will be following us and this little guy until their services are needed (or until he turns 19, but that is highly unlikely).
I have also been scheduled - and re-scheduled, and re-re-scheduled - for my Level 2 ultrasound. I will be going in early on Monday of next week, and we are hoping to know more after it has been done. This ultrasound is more detailed than regular ones, and they know what to be focusing on and looking for since the diagnosis of trisomy 18 has already been confirmed. The Dr. we spoke with at Roger's House echoed my thoughts, which were that any defects might be relatively small for them not to have been noticed on previous ultrasounds. This has been my hope, but I don't want to get my hopes up too high and say that it must not be too bad.
As a final note, I received a call from our genetic counselor, who had gotten our final amniocentesis results. We were basically waiting for these to confirm whether the extra 18th chromosome was passed on by one of us (highly unlikely) or if it was simply one of those random occurrences. To explain why this would have mattered, if it was passed on by one of us, then it would greatly increase the chances of this happening again if we try to have another baby. In addition to that, when our children are ready to have children of their own, they would need to be tested to determine if they were carriers of the extra 18th chromosome as well, to assess the risk that they would then increase their risk of having a trisomy 18 baby of their own. Much to our relief, it has been shown to be a pure coincidence, we are not at any increased risk of having this happen again and neither are the Hennebabies.
So that's about it for now. Hopefully once I have been for my ultrasound I will even have a decent picture of this little dude to show you all! I will post again when I have something to post, but in this case no news may very well be good news!
Take care everyone!
bin