28 Weeks!! Baby B gets to call the shots...

The good news today is that we reached 28 weeks! We are officially in the third trimester and our survival rates just shot way up! For our 28th week, I guess there is someone out there saying we don't get to know all the details. We went in for our ultrasounds and amnio yesterday morning and Baby B doesn't have enough fluid in safe places to do the test so it is not meant to be. We were reassured once again that the vastly most likely scenario has nothing to do with chromosomes anyway and little B just isn't getting everything he needs from the placenta with the restricted blood flow in the cord. So without those results we just go with how B is doing. If everything stays as is or improves for him we just keep resting and monitoring and letting everybody grow. If he starts to decline we deliver. This is, of course, way earlier than we had hoped to deliver, but he could hang in there for weeks and we may not have to.

After all that, last night began our first night of continuous monitoring for Baby B. His heart rate wasn't accelerating and decelerating the way it should  be so we kept an eye on him all night. The other test that gets done more frequently now is the biophysical profile (BPP) to make sure he's moving, his heart rate is where it needs to be, he's practice breathing and he's got a little fluid in there. Well, he pretty much will always lose his points for fluid, but he had been passing all the other tests. This morning was a little different though so we got moved back up to labor and delivery from antepartum (this meant lots of tears for mom who's just not ready to be in the delivery department). This isn't to say that we'll be delivering, it just says that they are watching even closer and the doctor wants me closer to her for monitoring and she wants me closer to the OR in case the time comes. We have another BPP in a few minutes here and are hoping little guy B decided to perk up from this morning to show them all he can do all the tricks so we can all stay in a little longer.

We did meet with the NICU so we know what to expect should we have to deliver before we get to go on our official tour next week and we know that they have the very best doctors and that there's no place better for these babies if they have to come out, but we want more days, more weeks to give them the best shot possible.

So for now we rest and grow as much as we can in between the monitoring...

On the heart rate monitors for all babies!

Contrary to popular belief, this is not the spa, the towels are there to wipe up all the ultrasound  goo that is ever present in our world...