Hospital again tomorrow...

So. We're off to the hospital again in the morning for another scan.
I'll be 15wks2days.
I'm hoping they might be able to tell us for sure about whether we have escaped Meckel-Gruber syndrome this time. If they can give us any more information about the baby's heart, then that will be a bonus.
And who knows, maybe we'll be able to find out if LO is a boy or a girl.
I want to find out what's going on, but I'm so scared that our hopes and dreams might be snatched away again.
Please be alright, LO.

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14w2d...

Ok, so I'm over 14wks now - well into my second trimester.
SECOND TRIMESTER!!
Do you hear me, morning sickness?
You are supposed to be gone, leaving me revitalised, full of energy and blooming.

Blooming awful, more like.

Bleagh.

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LO's latest portrait...

Here's LO at my last scan.

According to the dates they gave me last time, he/she is 12w2d, but according to his/her size on this scan, it might be 12w5d. Either way, LO is growing very well and is a bit bigger than average.

We were able to find out far more than we expected at the scan.

First and foremost, the nuchal fold measured 1.3mm - teeny tiny! They want it to be less than 3mm so that was a great start.

We explained our previous history to the sonographer (who recognised me from the speech I did last November!!) and asked her to look first at the kidneys - if they were massive, the nuchal fold measurement was really pretty redundant.

She had a look and (with a bit of hunting) spotted two small, very unremarkable looking kidneys, and a bladder. Hurrah! At this point in my pregnancy with Will, his kidneys were the size of those of a 27-week foetus and he had no bladder, so this was a GREAT start.

She also had a look at the brain - it was already well divided into the two hemispheres and appeared normal for this stage of pregnancy.

Then, much to our delight, she told us she was something of a cardiac specialist, and proceeded to have a good look at LO's heart.

She instantly spotted two AV valves and zoomed in to a FOUR-chamber view of the heart.

Yes - FOUR chambers. I make no apologies for my excessive use of capitals... this is amazing. She pointed out the right ventricle (the one Charlie has) and the much larger left ventricle. (which Charlie doesn't.)

She could see them.

I could see them.

Pete could see them.

I even collared Mr Beattie as he popped his head around the door, and HE could see them too.

FOUR chambers. TWO ventricles. I have to admit, I was stunned. Will had HLHS and so does Charlie. Pete and I have never conceived a child with all four chambers of its heart.

Until now, it seems.

Having said that, we aren't out of the woods yet by any means. We go back on April 12, when I'll be 15+wks.

We're hopeful that, by then, we might be able to rule some stuff out for certain. We might even be able to find out of LO is a he or a she. I was 16wks with Charlie when they definitively ruled out Meckel-Gruber syndrome, and definitively confirmed HLHS.

But we never had the nuchal fold scan with Chas - nor a pretty positive four-chamber view of the heart. It is amazing how much the technology has advanced in the last seven years.

We asked Mr Beattie if he felt confident enough for us to tell Charlie about the baby, and he replied 'Well, we've seen the kidneys, bladder and four-chamber view... I would!'

So we did.

I wrapped up an 'I'm the big brother' T-shirt for him and he opened it as soon as he got in from school. His reaction was totally priceless, and he is over the moon. I've uploaded the video below, so blow it up to full screen and crank your speakers right up!

He talks to the baby every day, hugs my tummy, and loves to plan all the things they'll do together if all is well. I hope this little one is ok.

After the next scan, we'll have another at about 20wks - the standard anomaly scan. Although, so far, things are looking promising, there are still a lot of things that can go wrong. And by 20wks, they should be able to tell us everything.

But whatever happens, I'll always treasure three little words on the scan report... "Heart Appears Normal".

PS Apologies for the very spacy layout on this post - Blogger isn't playing ball.

Charlie finds out about LO...

Scared.

Well. We'll be at the hospital in just over an hour. Although today's scan is unlikely to be totally conclusive, it should give us a pretty clear indication of which way the wind is blowing. It's scary knowing that in an hour or so, we'll know whether we can keep on hoping for 'boring and ordinary' or if we have another rollercoaster ride ahead of us.

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You know what I said yesterday...

...about my morning sickness tailing off?

I lied.

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11 weeks

Hi folks. Well. Here we are at 11 weeks. I may be proved wrong but my morning sickness seems to be improving a bit. I suppose I am rapidly heading for the second trimester though, so nothing unusual there.
Mind you, I have had fairly lazy mornings the last few days, and it's always worse when I have to rush around.
I just realised I never wrote a proper update about our scan.
Well - we went up to the hospital to see the fetal medicine team. It's always nice to walk in and be greeted by the consultant with a hug and a kiss!
I feel so privileged to have such a wonderful team around me - it makes me more confident that we'll deal with anything that's thrown at us.
So.
I had a scan. I lay on the table and chatted with the sonographer, but as soon as she put the gel on my tummy, I started to cry.
It was the most enormous rush of emotions - fear that she might tell us that the baby didn't have a heartbeat, and blind terror - if there WAS a heartbeat - at the journey we are starting out on.
Anyway, I pulled myself together and looked at the screen, where LO was wriggling around happily. We could see the little arms waving and the tiny legs pumping.
As I said in the last post, I was right about being a bit further on than my initial dates had predicted - the scan put me forward by three days.
In a stupid way, I found this reassuring. With both Will and the miscarriage, my dates were pushed back by a week, so that would have felt like a very bad sign. Plus, Charlie was exactly where my dates said he should be, so it was nice for this baby to be totally different in that respect. (Not that it makes any difference really, but it made me feel better!)
They said the baby looked great, and totally normal for this stage. They also had a look at the yolk sac, which apparently looked very good too.
After the scan, they did my booking appointment, so there's no need for me to go to the GP - all my care will be under the fetal medicine department.
I had my bloods done, and my blood pressure (which, by some miracle, was very good at 106/64)
Then we saw the consultant, Bryan Beattie. He was very positive, which was nice. We've known him for years now, and he always tells us exactly how it is. He knows I work best with a 'just tell me everything' approach.
We told him we were inclined to have no more scans until 20 weeks, because we didn't think that we would be able to learn anything useful until then.
However, he was very keen for us to go back in a couple of weeks for a nuchal fold scan.
This was only just coming into its own when I had the boys, and was for determining the risk of Down's Syndrome, and has to be done between about 11 and 13wks. We never bothered with it before, because a Down's diagnosis wouldn't have changed anything for us anyway.
But apparently, in recent years, it has been discovered that a thickened nuchal fold can also signify whether a baby is likely to have a major cardiac defect AND, as I later discovered, Meckel Gruber syndrome. Plus, some of the physical signs of Meckel Gruber would possibly be visible by then on ultrasound.
So, although we won't know definitively at the 12 week scan, we will have a jolly good idea of which way the wind is blowing.
The plan is to have the scan at 12w2d (March 22) and if the nuchal fold looks good, Mr Beattie is confident enough to leave any further scans until 20wks, when we would have the standard anomaly scan. We would then follow that up with a detailed cardiac scan at 24wks.
If, however, the nuchal fold is thickened, we will have another scan at about 14wks to see what's going on.
It feels good to have a plan in place.
Before we left, I showed Mr Beattie the scan pictures we were given. To be honest, I wasn't expecting him to look at them in a diagnostic light - I was just showing off LO's first portrait!
But one of the pictures showed a clear side-on picture of LO, with a clear shot of the nuchal fold.
He showed me how to identify the fold, and said: 'It's a bit early to assess it, but that, to me, looks like a very small one.'
I found that comment so reassuring - firstly, there was no need for him to point out the nuchal fold at all, and secondly, I can't imagine he would have mentioned it if the nuchal fold was likely to suddenly balloon over the ensuing two weeks, and if a small nuchal fold now has no bearing at all on how it might look in a fortnight.
Needless to say, I came home and started Googling images of nuchal folds, and it does look pretty good so far!
So, for the moment, things are looking as good as they possibly can.
I'm feeling more optimistic than I ever have before.
Foolish, probably, but what's the point in hoping and praying for something to happen, if you don't believe it ever will?
I know it's a bit daft, but we've always said to Charlie that if we see a rainbow, it means Will is saying hello. Then, a couple of days after Dad died, we saw the most amazing double rainbow, and Chas said 'Look - it's Will AND Grandpa saying hello!'
So rainbows always make us think of them and smile.
Anyway, as we left the hospital, we were walking down the stairs, and there, projected onto the floor at our feet were two rainbows.
I have no idea what the sun was shining through to make them, but they were there - bright and beautiful.
I know, scientifically, it has no bearing on anything at all - but those two little splashes of colour felt like a hug.

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