Baby Girl at 23 weeks

Everything has been going wonderfully with 'baby girl'. She is 1 lb 4 oz now, and at viability. She is very well behaved (so far) and really likes gummy worms, ice, and would really love a margarita. Every Perinatologist visit I get a CD and a DVD (some of which is in 4D!) and a movie of her. All of her parts and organs are measured and placed in a percentile. I don't think there can be any doubt that everything is PERFECT inside there. These ultrasounds 'xray' her bones, and we can see her entire skeleton. We've followed the blood flow throughout her body and know her heart and organs are getting optimum oxygen. We've seen her face and know it's gorgeous. And we have in fact, checked every time to make sure she's 'still' a girl. :) I will only see the Perinatologist one more time (as long as every thing's going just as wonderfully as now) so this will be one of my last videos/cds of her until she's born.









Yeah, I know, amazing isn't it?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Clay's 'super exciting medical drama' continues on, and I feel like we're following the yellow brick road, finding new and interesting things along the way and hopefully we'll reach the wizard within the year.

A bit of good news, NO a bit of GREAT news: Clay does NOT HAVE CELIAC DISEASE!
I can't tell y'all how relieved I am, Not only does he just not have some yucky small intestine disease, but I can feed him macaroni and corn dogs again GUILT FREE!

We saw the pediatric surgeon at UCLA and followed up with his pediatric GI specialist last week. The surgeon was very nice and informative and open to questions. He explained that Clay's gallbladder situation was very rare, especially for his age, and that he was surprised no one had looked into WHY he was getting these huge gallstones. He explained that several of his symptoms (calcified gallstones - which apparently are different than regular ones, it alludes to the fact that they're composed of a different substance entirely), constant anemia, and having a hard time getting over jaundice as a baby points us in a direction of a hematologic disorder. (That's a blood disorder y'all.)

He's not certain that clay has one, but he ordered some blood work to investigate since his symptoms are similar.
One in particular, spherocytosis, was his main focus and hopefully the blood tests will be back within about 2 weeks and tell us he does not in fact have this. (What is is with hematology/pathology taking two weeks for everything!?)

Spherocytosis is a genetic disorder where the red blood cells get all misshapen by the spleen and cause all sorts of issues. I think I'll save the brief for after we know whether he has it or not. Until then, you can get a brief synopsis here. It's a little frightening at some parts and might warrant some removal of MORE organs, blood transfusions, and sepsis complications....so right now, we're just going to assume the best (until told other wise) and plan on Clay's gallbladder surgery in May. (UCLA has yet to call and schedule that) We're waiting until May so we can have the blood results back and change our surgery plan accordingly.

On a much, much brighter note, after the GI doc did some more tinkering with his meds, Clay has been TALKING! He still lacks several vowel sounds, but he is saying words! He is saying lots of them, and the ones he can't pronounce correctly, he is still trying to say them anyway! Woo hoo, awesome.

Hollywood!

My parents are usually only here when there's a medical crisis. Since I've been married, I think they've visited me twice when there was no one in the hospital, a baby hadn't just been born, or some one's life wasn't hanging in the balance.

I was really eager for us to get to DO SOMETHING. They always take wonderful care of me and the kids, but I wanted to show them we're not a bunch of needy, leech-y hypochondriacs.

We drove down to Santa Monica Pier on Tuesday after Easter. We ate lunch at Bubba Gumps and played in the sand awhile.









We drove to Hollywood to check out the hand prints and stars. My family has never been great at directions, or one way streets, or parking...Let's just say we were all glad to get out of the car once we were parked (at a very over priced lot!) in Hollywood.











We took pictures of a bunch of other stars including Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Gilda Radner, etc. There was one star that was always jam packed, and you basically had to wait in line to get a picture with it. Can you guess who it was?

Michael Jackson


We saw Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theatre, the Wax Museum, Ripley's Believe it or not, and Madame Tussoud's. (That's where they have all the real looking, fake celebrities and you can take your picture with them.) I'd love to go into all of those places someday, but it being 5 o'clock, we were pushing the kids time limit.












We finished the day off at the Disney Ice cream and Soda shop. It was delicious!

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter, celebrated with my parents who finally made it into town.
I know it's hard for them to make it out here, but since it had been 5 months, we were all missing them a lot!

On Saturday they helped with getting our "Reveal" party together. It was so fun and such a good idea. We had so many compliments and I think all of our friends really enjoyed it.









I still can't believe we're having a girl, but that's another post for another time.

Carter dyed eggs for the first time this year. We discovered the attention span for a 3 year old boy and dying eggs was 10 eggs....









The Easter Bunny was nice enough to grace us with his presence. He brought way too much candy....











Since we haven't really found a church yet (and it's 95% our fault we haven't been actively looking for one like we should) we went to Easter brunch at the O'Club, followed with an egg hunt and an Easter bunny apperance.











Trying to take a picture with the Grandparents...was hilarious. I have to post the whole sequence....

"HILARIOUS!"


"Oh my God Y'all, I am making this picture SO FUNNY!"


"Whoa! Oh God, don't fall and break my head again!"


"Whew, that was close!"


"Wha?"


For those of you who haven't spent a lot of time with Carter, This sequence was taken in about 4 seconds and these same 4 seconds are on repeat the entire 12 hours he's awake.

We're having a......

Endoscopy

Clay had his endoscopy today. Let me just say that if we're going to have to drag any kid to multiple procedures and Dr.s appointments, I'm glad it's Clay.
You know Carter is awesome, I would much rather run or jump or laugh at the silly monkey in the Hand Hand Fingers Thumb book with him any day.
Yeah, have you seen this thing? MOST.HILARIOUS.MONKEY.EVER.



Even more awesome, is that it's mine and Carter's funny joke.

But waking up super early, taking different medicines, going under, riding in the car for extended trips is much more Clay's cup of tea...

They gave Clay some "silly juice" about 30 minutes before his procedure, and he was quite the cute, drunken baby. He wasn't too exaggerated, but his mouth hung open and his eyes had that glossed over look.

A 2 year old little girl next to us got hers at the same time, and she was a hoot! She was grasping at objects in the air, and unable to keep her head up. She didn't care a bit when the anesthesiologist took her back to the OR.

Clay cried for just a moment when they took him from us, but he was done and 'awake' only 45 minutes later. They had him wrapped up in a warm blanket, half naked, and with a bottle in his mouth. It was so sweet to see him be a 'baby' again, asleep and sucking away. But heaven help you when that bottle was empty. It was the most offended, agitated 'roar' of a cry when that apple juice was gone. I don't even know if Carter could have matched it.
Add to that the awareness that his arms was bundled up with an IV, his chest hooked up to EKG leads and it was over, we were done for. I've never seen Clay agitated like that, but luckily it was all over and he was feeling back to himself within 5-10 minutes.
We laid and snuggled for about 45 minutes while he gradually woke up, ate a cracker and tried sitting up. That is more the Clay I'm used to.

The procedure itself went seamlessly and we only had one surprise finding! She showed us a picture of his vocal chords and explained that they are very swollen from reflux. Now, reflux wasn't a problem we were aware he had, but apparently it's pretty severe to cause this damage. Thankfully Cory thought to ask if this could be a culprit to his speech problem and she was very quick to agree! She said, "Of course, there's no way he could talk normally with his vocal cords in this condition. He can probably only make a few certain sounds. No wonder he's behind!"

I am super excited that we had a good surprise finding, and that with this new medication, his vocal cords should be healed in about 4-6 months!

They took some biopsies of his small intestine and the results will be available within 2 weeks. I of course was WAY too quick to think that things would be done quicker since we were in the LA area. Things have been moving slower here than when we lived in Korea.

Here's to hoping some answers are on those slides and the 13th of April will bring us some good news!

Shots

**warning, this post may contains words like cervix and uterus, please do not continue if you don't want to hear about those parts of your daughter's (or daughter in laws) body.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, my ultrasound went great and the baby measured and looked great! I can't wait to watch the movie! (S)he had all the ribs, bones, chambers of the heart, kidneys, stomachs and bladders (s)he's supposed to have.
I had started to become a little worried since I can still fit into regular jeans (pretty comfortably) and don't look all too pregnant - unless it's at the end of the day and I've eaten a lot, then I kind of look pregnant.

I was somewhat convinced we were having a dwarf baby. Which, would totally be cool with me, but can you imagine Cory having a dwarf baby? That would seem like a weird cruel joke in some ways I think.

One thing the Dr did find (and I think it's so awesome that the perinatologist is the one who did my ultrasound. Right then and there, It gives me a lot more reassurance about the baby being totally on track!)
was that my cervix is measuring very short. Which, is not a super cool thing, and so they're going to measure it every two weeks and hope it doesn't get any shorter. If it does, I go on bed rest. Aaaand, I'm not really sure how that's logistically possible..but I guess we'll do our best right?
Also - don't lift anything over 15 lbs. Things that are over 15 lbs that I have to lift? CLAY. If he would get the MEMO already and please start walking, I think I could follow that rule for a good bit of the day. Too bad babies can't use fax machines, or e-mails or read. It makes sending them memos very difficult.

And, their last plan of painfulness, I will be taking 17p shots on a weekly basis. (Also known as progesterone) to help keep preterm labor at bay. I've been reading a lot of success stories with this stuff, and people who had micro preemies first, are having 36 weekers! I haven't read anyone making it to 40 weeks (which IS TOTALLY fine with me, I would just like 38 please!) people seem to be averaging around 36 and 37.
And actually 36 is a pretty good number too, and this shot will probably help get me there safely again! We are just trying to prevent baby coming any earlier than that!