Monday, June 29, 2015

T - 17 Days

I'm scheduled for an induction on July 16th. We have 17 days until the shit hits the fan.

We had our last fetal echo, and everything looks the same as the last one. The good news is that one of her valves that looked small before seems to look more normally sized now and if that's the case it will limit the amount of surgeries she'll need in the future. Her oxygenated and unoxygenated blood seems to be mixing well too, at least according to the ultrasounds.

There's really only so much we can tell from these ultrasounds. While things look ok now, we really won't know what's going on until she's born and they can do an ultrasound on her directly. We're prepared in that the cardiac team will be there when we deliver (hence the scheduled induction) ready to assist and administer whatever help she might need.

The possibilities range from her being fine and having decent enough oxygen levels to come home to things being much worse than we thought and her needing the Big Surgery right away. Again, we just won't know until she's here. And for someone who doesn't like surprises that's pretty hard to deal with.

While my husband had to go back to work after the fetal echo, I stayed at the hospital for my general OB appointments and then took a tour of the pediatric cardiac surgery floor.

Oy.

I'm glad I did it because I hate surprises, and this way I know where she'll be and what the place looks like and a general layout of the land but seeing all those other tiny little babies hooked up to the machines post-surgery... I managed to hold it together until we walked out and the door closed and then I lost it. I'm glad I did the tour, but it was rough to imagine your baby surrounded by machines keeping her alive, but that will eventually be us and again, I like to know what's going to happen and where we'll be.

So for now we're just preparing as though Helena will be coming home fairly soon after delivery (she'll of course be in the NICU for a time, but we're all hoping that she'll be here and a pretty much normal baby sooner rather than later) and setting up the swing and the changing tables and buying tiny little diapers. It's weird getting this stuff ready not knowing when she'll be able to use it, but I want it ready for her when she needs it.

I was telling my husband earlier that I'm done being pregnant (I fucking hate being pregnant), but at the same time I don't want her to come out yet because that's when things start getting scary. While she's in there she's safe and fine and healthy. When she comes out, who knows.

We're hanging in there. We're psyching ourselves up for delivery and all that comes with it. And we're scared. But we can't control the situation (which is hard for both of us) and all we can do is prepare as best as possible and we feel confident that we've done that. We keep being told that this hospital is The Place to be for things like this, and that we'll have the best care possible. That's all we can do for her, which is really fucking hard.