I had a big long entry written last night, but blogger ate it when I attempted to publish it. :( So I guess I'll try and reconstruct it.

I am now just over 27 weeks pregnant. We had our weekly appointment yesterday. I also had an ultrasound. It was kind of a good news/bad news thing. The good news is that the baby is still growing. I was able to read the head measurement and it was about 26 1/2 weeks and the baby's estimated weight is 1 1/4 pounds. The bad news is that there is still no fluid (or possibly only very miniscule pockets) around the baby. But I must say that I have now thoroughly confused all my doctors. Our appointment was with my "real" doctor, whom I haven't seen in about 5 weeks. After the u/s we talked about what has been happening in those last 5 weeks, how we thought at that time time the end was imminent but that something suddenly changed only two days later. That, together with what the u/s showed and the fact that is has been 9 weeks since the baby was diagnosed with fetal hydrops made my doctor decided to call the perinatalogist we saw that gave us the initial diagnosis, just to see if he had any input. His thoughts? He can't understand why the baby has made it this far. His concern now that we are fast approaching viability is that without fluid, the lungs can't develop. There's a technical term for it, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is....pulmonary something-or-other. He feels we should go back to U of M and have them take another look at things and pursue chromosomal analysis. This will tell us if there is a lethal chromosomal problem, which would determine how things are handled at delivery.

That's right...we are now entertaining the possibility, remote that it is, that this pregnancy will result in a live (though very premature, I'm sure) birth rather than a stillbirth. I swear, if I wasn't actually living this, I'd be thinking that someone was making up one hell of a whopper to garner everyone's sympathy. Of course, the chances that the baby will survive are smaller than the possibility of it being born alive.

When we met with the pediatric cardiologist, we asked about when the baby could be viable. The doctor said that healthy babies can be viable from 25 weeks onward, but that for our baby, with the heart damage it already had, we would need to get to 31 or 32 weeks. Since that was still 12 weeks away, we knew it was never going to happen. But now, here we are, staring that "goal" in the face. Because we never imagined it was possible, we didn't even bother asking what could be done at that point. Now we're kind of wondering.

We had problems with low fluid with Alison, though hers were surgery related. At that time, our doctor had mentioned the possiblity of amnio infusion. Yesterday, after our appointment, Kevin and I talked about it. Not in a particularly serious way, more along the lines of "hey, remember how Alison had low fluid problems and Dr. W____ mentioned doing a "reverse amnio?" We quickly agreed that it probably wouldn't do anything in this case and wouldn't even be worth pursuing. I mentioned this to my doctor when she called yesterday and she did say that sometimes doctors will go ahead with it in order to be able to get a better look at the baby or to make it easier to do a cordiocentisis. So this may actually be something suggested for us. There are risks involved, particularly fetal demise. That's why Dr. W____ wasn't chomping at the bit to do a regular amnio. He was concerned that if the baby died, we wouldn't know if it was because of fetal hydrops or the amnio. But since we've been preparing ourselves for the baby to die for the last 9 weeks anyway, what difference will it really make, right?

While I was chatting with the doctor, I menitoned that I had talked to my mom that afternoon and she said she wouldn't be surprised if Dr. W____ wanted to see me again. I told her I agreed, since who wouldn't want to see my second "freak of nature." The doctor laughed and said she didn't know how I did it, kept going through this, and didn't understand why I was being put through two such difficult pregnancies. I said sometimes you just do what you have to do and that God must have a warped sense of humor. :)



Now, on a totally unrelated subject, and as kind of a follow-up to my last entry, yesterday between 12 pm and 6 pm Alison went through 3 pairs of underwear and 2 pull-ups (because by that point we ran out of clean underwear), and when all was said and done, was on her third pair of pants. The three pairs of underwear were wet accidents, the two pull-ups were poopy ones. Each and every time, the incident was announced to me and accompanied with "but it's ok, mommy." Who would have thought that all the progress we had made over the last 6 weeks could be undone with three little words: oh, that's ok. So I want to say a big thanks a lot to my wonderful MIL. @@

What kind of idiot tells a potty training/ed child, who has had an accident in their underwear, that it's ok to do that? That would be my mother-in-law.

Alison is doing a great job with the potty, but we still have accidents. Most of the time it's just a wet accident, but last night, for some reason, she pooped in her pants and didn't say a word about it. She sat in it long enough to end up with a red butt. Needless to say, my husband wasn't happy when he discovered it, just as he was going to do her stretches and then get her in the tub.

His mother called just as he was getting Alison into her pajamas. He put her on speaker phone and let her talk to Alison while he was finishing up. Because the monitor was on, I got to hear the conversation, too. Grandma did more talking than listening, but Alison did get a chance to tell her that she had pooped in her underwear, -- and she specifically said underwear...not diaper, not pull up -- and my lovely MIL told her not once, but twice, that it was ok that she had pooped in her underwear. I wanted to reach through the monitor and the phone and strangle her. I also wanted Kevin to tell her that it wasn't ok for Alison to go in her underwear, but he didn't. Perhaps the next time it happens I need to bag up her underwear and pants and send them to grandma to deal with. Then perhaps she would understand why what she said was so inappropriate.....then again, maybe she wouldn't.

And people wonder why I'm glad that my MIL lives 16 hours away. Fortunately, Alison has not taken her words to heart, because she did tell us when she had to go today. So we didn't have to deal with another accident, even though she was wearing a pull up (since it was just before nap time).

We have instituted the naughty spot at our house. Yes, I will freely admit to having become hooked on Supernanny. Mostly, it reassures me that things at our house are not nearly as bad as I might sometimes think they are.

So anyway, we have a naughty spot now. It all happened Friday evening at supper time. Alison and I came into the house and were on our way to the bathroom to wash up for supper when she noticed the butter dish sitting on the dining room table (we were having corn on the cob). She reached for it and I told her no. She took the lid off and I told her no. She stuck her finger into the butter and then stuck a finger-full into her mouth, as I shouted no. I then sent her to her room. It was at this point that I realized that was a dumb thing to do. In her room she has a bunch of stuffed animals and all her books. Who wouldn't want to be sent there? So I told her to come out and sit at the end of the hallway, facing the wall. She would have to stay there for 3 minutes. Voila....instant naught spot. So there she sat, for three minutes. She didn't get up and try to go somewhere else, she just sat there. When the timer went off, I went and sat with her and explained again why she was there, she apologized, and we hugged. Then we got ready for dinner.

Since then, if we even raise our voice at her as a warning, she will either tell us she needs to go to the naughty spot or head down the hall and put herself in it. I'm not sure if it counts as punishment if you don't mind what you have to do when you're being punished.

I did a rather dumb thing today. I finished reading Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (by James Patterson) today. It was a pretty good book, and a fast read....289 pages of fairly large type, for a paperback....I think it took me about 3 hours, total. Although I had some idea of what the book was about, I really wasn't prepared for the last diary entry. I have become teary over books before, but I don't really recall a time where I have completely broken down over a book. I'm talking a real honest to goodness sobbing, shaking, gulping breakdown. That's what the combinatinon of the story, the pregnancy hormones, and our current situation resulted in.

Now, that I have finished that book, the last one in my stack, I have nothing (new) left to read until we go to the library on Thursday. I guess I'll have to go peruse my bookshelves to find another quick read to tide me over until then.

Alison got a helium balloon at the grocery store today. We hadn't planned to buy one but she left the store with one anyway. At Kevin's company picnic they were giving the kids helium balloons, but Alison couldn't have one. They were latex balloons and we don't let her have stuff with latex. So Kevin told her he would buy her a balloon at the store. She didn't really say anything about it last week, but today, she said she wanted one and daddy had said he would buy her one. So now she has a pretty orange and pink butterfly balloon.

As of right now, she's been playing with her balloon for almost 25 minutes. The ribbon is just long enough for her to be able to reach it by herself when she lets go and it floats back up to the ceiling. So that's what she's been doing....letting go, letting it float up to the ceiling and then snatching it back down again. Sometimes she'll take it and put it on the floor and say "stay on the floor, balloon." But as soon as she lets go, up to the ceiling it goes again, and she doesn't quite understand why.

Well, 25 weeks down. How many more to go? Who knows. It should be 12 more, but realistically, that's not going to happen. I had my weekly check-up yesterday, and it was more of the same. Pele is still living up to his/her nickname. S/he is apparently still growing....after 2 weeks measuring at 23, yesterday was 24 1/2. Not quite caught up, but still showing growth. His/her heart rate was still in the 140's. None of this is what is supposed to be happening. The baby is supposed to be slowing down, both in movement and heart rate, and s/he should not be growing.

My check-up was kind of weird yesterday. There are 4 doctors and a nurse practitioner in this practice. Of those 4 doctors, I have one that is "my" doctor. When pregnant, they rotate us through all the doctors so that we will have met them at least once or twice if they happen to be the doctor on call when it's time to deliver. Anyway, back to yesterday's appointment. This is only the third time over 2 pregnancies that I've seen this particular doctor. I don't think I care for her very much. Maybe it's just her way, or maybe it's just that she was behind schedule yesterday, but she was very short with us. And she was kind of contradictory, too, in a way. On the one hand, she was verifying that I would be getting my Rhogam shot at my 28 week appointment, like there was nothing wrong, and on the other hand, when I asked about whether I needed to do the glucose tolerance test, she said no, because obviously no one expects this pregnancy to last long enough for it to be an issue. Anyway, we've decided that if movement, heart rate and growth are still the same next week, we're going to ask to have another ultrasound.

For anyone who thinks cell phones are not a distraction when you are driving, I've got news for you.....they are!

Last night we came home from spending the weekend with my parents. I decided to take over driving after we stopped to pick up something for dinner, mostly because I just wanted to get home and I drive faster, or at least at a more consistent speed, than Kevin. I also figured that he could finally get ahold of his mother, since he tried to Sunday night and she ended up calling our cell twice and our house 3 times because she is incapable of listening to and comprehending messages left on answering machines. But that's another story.

So we switched places and Kevin did call his mom, but she wasn't back from visiting his grandmother at the nursing home. He left a messaged that she could call the cell and he would be able to talk because he wasn't driving. So I knew that she would be calling back eventually.

We'd been on the road for a little more than an hour. We passed a cop that was just finishing up with a car s/he had pulled over. I had slowed down to the exact speed limit and a little ways down the road started speeding up again. I knew that the cop had finished up and pulled out. At the exact time that I was cruising down the highway at 79 mph and realized that the cop was coming up behind me really fast, the phone rang. Somehow, in that split second, my brain connected the phone with the cop, thinking that it was coming at me with lights and sirens, even though the flashing lights weren't even on. I nearly drove off the road! The cop blew past me, off on some other business, and Kevin answered the phone. And once my heart slowed down, I calmly drove us the rest of the way home.