Our Sassy Little (Very Little!) Guy

After such an eventful day on Monday, I'm happy to post a boring blog now.  We had an ultrasound this morning that showed normal blood flow!  There is no sign of absent flow today like there was the last two days.  Basically, if our ultrasound looked like this two days ago, we wouldn't have been admitted (but I'm so thankful we were admitted for when the preterm labor scare happened).  Since we found out things can take a turn for the worse very quickly, we plan to remain in the hospital until the baby is born.

It has been three weeks since the last growth scan, so we had another measurement today.  We were hoping he'd be at least 2.5 lbs by now since we've had almost three weeks of good blood flow, but he's smaller than we thought.  According to the ultrasound measurements, he's the size of an average 27 wk, 4 day baby: 2.0 lbs or 931 grams.  If only we can get him greater than 1000 g...then he'd be out of the "extremely low birth weight" zone and into the "very low birth weight" range.  Not that the title of the range matters, but it's a psychological thing for us, I guess.  I'm just thankful he wasn't born two nights ago.  Let's give him more time to grow.  He is still on the growth chart (<3%), so that's reassuring.  Just to give perspective, an average baby at 30 weeks should be about 3 lbs.

We had a long talk with Dr. "Buff" today.  Through talking with the doctors, nurses, and techs, we have learned that his outlook is the most optimistic, but he's the quickest to cut (meaning it doesn't take as much to decide on a c-section).  Dr. Pessimist is the most pessimistic overall, but she is more comfortable waiting a little before jumping to c-section (as is evident by how she let me relax the other night to see if that helped before rushing me to the OR). All three of the doctors feel a c-section will be days, and not weeks, away, but they'll keep watching and hold off as long as the baby looks good.  He looks good now, but if there is any indication he gets stressed, or the blood flow reverses, or any other concerning signs pop up, they are going to have a low threshold for operating sooner rather than later.  We have been so pleased with the care we've gotten.  It has been nice getting opinions from all three of them.  They are in agreement in the overall plan of care, but each one has a varying level of "sphincter tone," shall we say, over waiting vs operating.  I don't envy them for the decisions they have to make!  Since we trust them all fully, when any one of them is on duty and says it's time for a c-section, we won't argue one bit.  All that being said, we are still shooting for 32 weeks.  I have been told to stay NPO (not eating) every morning until after the ultrasound, so I'll be ready for a c-section each morning if anything looks concerning.  I'm praying when the time comes, it'll be a relaxed, well thought out decision to head to the OR "sometime today" rather than a frantic stat c-section.


Here's a picture from 2 weeks ago of our little guy playing peek-a-boo. Actually, I think we missed the shot, but perhaps a few seconds before this, he had both thumbs in his ears, wiggling his fingers above his head, sticking his tongue out and saying, "nah nah nah nah, boo boo" to the medical world that thought he was going to be born 6 weeks ago. :)  It looks like he has a big, fat arm, but I think some of that is overlapping placenta (it's also the white stuff in front of his hand).