Getting the news

The past nine months have changed our lives so much that I don't even know where to begin. On February 21, 2008 we were ecstatic to discover that we were going to have a baby. We were quite shocked considering we had only been married for four months (almost to the day)!

Although there were a few bumps in the road, the spring went by so fast. When I was six weeks pregnant I came down with the flu for the first time in my life. Wow! Talk about miserable!! I was able to stay home from work for a week...thank goodness. The Monday that I returned after recovering from flu, the beauty of morning sickness reared it's ugly head. It seemed that this baby didn't like the scent of shampoo or warm running water. It was all I could do to get through a shower! Luckily that only lasted for about three weeks. By the time that summer came around I was still wearing my regular clothes and had only gained six pounds when school let out. I was happy that as the weather was heating up I was staying relatively comfortable.

The wait to find out the gender of the baby wasn't too bad. Time was going by so quickly that 20 weeks seemed to almost sneak up. Our appointment was scheduled for June 17. Brian and I truly did not have a preference about the baby being a boy or a girl, but we both had a strong feeling that it was a girl.

I had been in California for my cousin's high school graduation the week before our appointment. As I walked out the door of my aunt's house on June 16th, everyone was so anxious about the next day. Well, after sitting on the runway for 2 hours, my flight was cancelled. There was no way that I would make it home for my appointment...we were so bummed! The news seemed to get worse when they couldn't reschedule until July 2nd! Two more weeks to wait. Oh well!

20 weeks seemed to fly by, but the two week wait until July 2nd was so long! The day finally arrived and we were pretty excited. Apparently we were the last appointment and there was no one else in the office. As the sonographer started the sonogram the very first thing she said was, "we've got a boy!", I was so surprised. All Brian could was, "really?!" She was very thorough and told us about all of the measurements she was taking. It was so neat to see him and actually be able to make out body parts instead of looking at what looked like a peanut. She was trying the whole time to get him to turn around so that she could take a few more measurements. After about 20 minutes she decided to give him a break. Brian went to get me a coke and we waited in the waiting room for about half an hour. We called our parents to give them the news about the boy. I was still pretty shocked about it and my mom didn't believe me.


We went back in to the room and she continued the sonogram. She poked around a little more and we could tell she was looking closely at the heart. She then, very bluntly said, "this baby has a heart defect." Never did I think it would turn out to be so serious. With a long family history of heart problems, I figured it was something minor and somewhat common. My doctor then came in to look at the sonogram and proceeded to tell us that she had never seen this before. This is something that I began to hate hearing!


As I think back to that day I still have a very hard time dealing with those emotions. When we walked away from that appointment we had no idea where to begin with the next step. My wonderful doctor told us not to go home and get on the internet and that she would immediately get on the phone with colleagues and get back with us as soon as she found more information.


The next week, she had us in with the best doctors in the world. We began our journey at Cook Childrens in Ft. Worth. Technology is amazing. They were able to perform an echocardiogram on the baby inutero. The incredible Dr. Roten was able to tell us a lot more about what was happening with the baby's heart. He has a congenital heart disease called a single ventricle.


As Dr. Roten was talking I can vividly remember thinking, I know she is talking but I have no idea what she is saying. I was emotionless. I truly thought that we would get there and their state of the art equipment would show no problems. I had convinced myself over the past few days that my ob's equipment just wasn't good enough and wasn't showing a clear enough picture.


The next twenty minutes spent with Dr. Roten were so full of information and I could hardly concentrate on what she was talking about. Needless to say, she explained that this defect comes with a series of reconstructive heart surgeries to correct. Over the course of the operations they will re-route blood flow from the heart through the lungs. Preston's lungs will eventually work as a bypass machine for the heart and basically take over the function of the missing ventricle. There are a possibility of three surgeries...one at birth (baby P got to skip this one), one between 4 and 6 months (we're aiming for the 6 month point), and one at three years old.


After meeting with Dr. Roten we were able to meet with three families whose children were in recovery from their 3 year surgery. The kiddos were up playing and didn't seem to be in any pain. I was very hesitant about agreeing to meet with them, but in the end I was glad we did. We talked with the families for about three hours and were able to get a better point-of-view of what the journey ahead of us will be like.

Over the next few months leading up to baby P's arrival we met many more doctors that will be in our lives for years to come. His surgeon, Dr. Tam, an amazing man, met with us for over 2 hours. Incredible! He studied under Dr. Norwood, the doctor who pioneered the three step procedure needed to correct the single ventricle heart defect.

So many changes came our way. We had fully intended to have the baby at the brand new hopsital that is walking distance from our house, with our great ob, Dr. Z. However, since we now needed to be near Cooks, we had to transition care to a doctor who would deliver at Harris Methodist Ft. Worth. That's when I realized how much God was leading the way for us.

My mother-in-law had been telling her brother about the baby's condition. He thought that it sounded strangely similar to his friend Jason's daughter's condition. That's when we began corresponding with Jason and Destiny, whose daughter has a similar condition. They were able to guide us in the direction of their doctor, Dr. Thigpen. What a small world...my friend Cortney also knows Jason and Destiny!

Anyhow, we planned with Dr. Thigpen to go as long as possible with the pregnancy and we would induce labor sometime around 39 weeks. He felt like this was the best option so that everyone would be in place when the baby was born, rather than having a surprise delivery. He was getting married at the end of October, so we decided to settle on inducing October 22.

Ok, longest post ever! I'm done now for now :)