1.27.2011

on Monday, we elected to have Winn's bladder drained again. we were honestly surprised when our doctor offered the procedure and thought that we would never have the opportunity to do that again. so Monday afternoon, they took me over to the maternal-fetal part of the hospital, and drained off 2400ml of fluid from Winn's belly. the 2400ml part is what i have a problem with. how the heck does that happen to a kid without his bladder rupturing? that's more than 2 liters sitting in my 28 week old baby's belly. the doctors infused about 1000ml of saline around the baby after draining the bladder to give him some room to move around in, and also to hopefully keep my body from thinking that it was time to have this baby.

the procedure was a success. i personally physically felt some relief by way of not having a belly that was beyond its capacity for this child. i also felt some relief in the sense that my child may now have some more room to move, his lungs might be able to practice their breaths, and his other systems might get some relief from the extreme distension of the past several weeks.

at our follow-up ultrasound yesterday, we saw that he is indeed still producing urine, because his bladder is pretty large again (nowhere near as large as the bladder we saw on Monday). this means two things for Winn.

1. his kidneys are still producing urine, and may have some kidney function left (good thing)
2. he's likely to swallow all of that fluid again and put himself right back where he started on Monday

one question that i get with this situation is whether or not our doctor is going to repeat this procedure until he's born. i really don't think that our doctor went into the procedure on Monday with the intention of repeating it. he actually had a feeling that the kidneys would not be in working order and would not have produced urine again therefore not filling up his bladder. the problem with serial bladder taps is that every time you introduce a needle into the situation, you introduce the chance for infection. we know how infection took our sweet little Raef, and we're not really keen on introducing that risk to this child.

i also received a visit from a woman who works in the NICU that i have fond memories of from our first time around. it was actually comforting to talk to her, it brought back some of the feelings of hope that i had two years ago when we were here with Raef. the children's hospital here has built a brand new NICU since we had to stay here with Raef and apparently each kid has their own private room. the same doctors are here, which is actually a comfort to me. i have to be able to admit to myself that the best case scenario for us is that our child will have to spend some time here in the NICU. for a best case scenario, that means that i will have to get used to the idea of being a NICU parent again.

on top of all of this, i'm a patient at St. Francis in the ante-partum unit. i have bathroom privileges and am allowed to shower once a week. i'm still on magnesium and don't exactly feel like myself and therefore have little motivation to do anything of value here. i have every intention to read the bible in 90 days, crochet finger puppets, and hopefully blog regularly. i pray daily for the strength to keep my head up through all of this, i pray that i can see the blessings that surround me every day. the fact of the matter is that i'm in a great hospital, i have exceptional nurses taking care of me every day, and i've even been able to reconnect with a couple of people that we met when when we were here with Raef. i'm truly blessed to have visitors during the week, and can't thank my friends, family, and work family enough for their emotional support during this time.