12.23.2010

It’s been a long week, to say the least!

Monday, Reid and I went to our doctor in Peoria for a checkup only to find that the shunt that was placed a couple of weeks ago had completely stopped working. Our baby was now growing a giant bladder once again and the amniotic fluid level was dropping. Our doctor immediately called the doctors in Philly who got us on a plane on Tuesday morning to meet them at their office at CHOP.

Tuesday morning, we landed in Philadelphia around 9:45am and immediately got into a cab to go to CHOP. Our doctor was ready for us when we got there, and we were seen immediately. The plan of action that was decided was to place another fetal shunt on Wednesday and also do an amnio-infusion at the same time to give the baby some room to roll around in and a chance to breathe.

We waited patiently for hours on Wednesday to be able to go into surgery, only to come out of it being told that they weren’t able to place the shunt due to the position of the baby. They did however still give us an amnio-infusion of 1000ccs of saline (that’s a lot!). We were to go home Wednesday night and come back on Thursday morning to assess whether or not the baby had moved into a better position, or if they would need to tap his bladder one more time to give him enough room to do so.

Immediately, the doctor noticed something on the ultrasound and told us that we had Chrioamniotic Membrane Separation which meant that the amniotic sac was detaching from the uterine wall. They only noticed it in a small area, so there was a tiny shred of hope that we may still be able to have the shunt placed on Monday after a bladder tap was performed today. The problem was, that the chance of this separation resolving is about 5%. Not a whole lot of chance that it would happen, but a small chance nonetheless.

Our doctor immediately gave us our options: 1. Terminate the pregnancy. The baby, without amniotic fluid and with a huge bladder would not have a chance to develop lungs that would sustain life. The membrane separation also poses a high risk of preterm labor and delivery ultimately leading to early infant death. This being a problem because a shunt would not be an option for a few reasons. 2. Do a bladder tap today, and see if the separation resolves itself by Monday. The caveat, if we waited until Monday to see if the separation has resolved itself, we would no longer be eligible for termination and would be forced to carry out the pregnancy no matter what.

The doctors left us alone for some time, in which Reid and I cried and tried to make sense out of having to make a decision such as letting our child go, just like that. Luckily, our friends were available to be on the phone with us, and pray with us, and we also called in some help from the home team here in Philly by having Andy and Becky come to the hospital to be with us. I am so glad that they came, I feel like it helped to ground us in the decision we were about to make. It helped to bring us back to why we had started on this journey in the first place; to be parents.

After asking more questions of our doctor, Reid and I decided that we could not, under any circumstances, terminate this pregnancy. After all, we’ve given the kid a name (William Winn Young but we've been calling him Winn and you can too!), we’ve loved him, we’ve felt him kick and be alive, and we’ve traveled far and wide to do anything we could possibly do to save him. We elected to have his bladder tapped one more time. We know full well that it’ll fill up again in a day, and that eventually he’ll run out of fluid and need to be delivered.

After the bladder tap, the sonographer scanned the baby once more, only to find that the separation was complete. It spanned the entire amniotic sac, not just the small area that we could see when his belly was big. The chances of intervention here at CHOP are now 0% and we’ve arranged to fly home tomorrow to Chicago to be with my family for Christmas.

Our prayer is that we can continue the pregnancy for as long and as safely as possible (both for myself and for Winn), and that we can provide a birth and possible death for our child that is dignified and peaceful when the time is right.

We’re not sure why we’re in this position again and we don’t understand why we’re being tested with such difficult decisions, but I truly believe that God is holding us in his hands, and I feel his grace even though I can’t feel his peace. Come, Lord Jesus.