27 Weeks and Meeting the Surgeon

Today is 27 weeks!  Next week begins the third trimester and I can feel the exhaustion coming back.  I’m in the final stretch here, but another 13 weeks sounds like a really long time!  But the longer I can keep him in, up until the due date, the better.  His favorite time of day to stretch and kick and dance around is between 3 and 5 am, hence the exhaustion.  Keep kicking and growing, little buddy! 

 

Today we met with the pediatric surgeon, Dr. Renard.  He has been doing pediatric surgeries, including repairing diaphragmatic hernias and working with ECMO for 20 years now.  The surgery to fix the hernia is not an emergency and they can even do it a month after the baby is born if they need to wait.  They used to do the surgery right after the baby was born but discovered that would often not help the baby.  They wait until the baby is stable and well oxygenated now.  He said they can do the repair thoroscopically but typically that is with smaller hernias and most likely they’ll need to do the larger incision.  (I figure Isaac will be able to tell all the girls about his huge scar and how he almost died and impress them all immensely)  He said they will use a gore-tex patch if they need to and that other patch materials have not been shown to work any better.  We asked him about which hospital in the area was the best and he said he would go to Medical City.  The only other option we were considering was Parkland/children’s hospital.  He said that it was a good hospital but that it was also a teaching hospital, and if it was his baby he would rather the doctors be concerned only with the baby and not trying to make every event a teaching moment.  We also asked him if it would be worth it to go all the way to Texas Children’s in Houston, but he said there would be no real difference in the care, just different doctors.   He said they can take care of as many as 3 babies on the ECMO machine if they need to, but they really try not to use it as much now because of all the complications.  They can control the breathing/oxygenation better now with new ventilators and medications.  (That was reassuring because I’ve read far too many scary ECMO stories!)  He also said he thought 25% lung capacity that Isaac has sounds pretty good and that he thinks he has a good chance.  That number terrified me when I read it on the MRI report so it was nice to hear him say it sounded favorable to life.  He said they really don’t know how well these babies will do until they are born, but the ones that do make it tend to do really well. 

 

Overall it was good to get our questions answered and feel more definite about a plan.  Because this surgery isn’t an emergency, most likely we will be able to have Dr. Renard do the surgery and we feel pretty good about that. 

 

Next Wednesday, the 3^rd, we see Dr. Weiss and Dr. Ryder.  I also have the dreaded glucose test where I have to drink a special “Glu-cola” drink (like really syrupy cool-aid) and then have blood taken to test for gestational diabetes.  Hopefully all of that will go well! 

 

Here is Isaac from our 25 week scan.  I love how it looks like his little fists are up, ready to fight for his life!