Pregnancy Report: BABY PICS, PART THREE!!!
You can see four new pics of Baby Kargel by clicking HERE or on the thumbnail below. Because there are several pics this time, I formatted things into one large picture, but at a reduced resolution, so the file is only moderately large, about 118K.
Baby is actually looking like a little person now...you can even see the face a bit, though it appears more like Alien Baby than anything else! ;
This past Friday (November 21st), Bridget and Baby had their first Level II Exam for the pregnancy. We travelled down to Atlanta to Northside Hospital. A pretty thorough ultrasound was performed, and we met and had a pregnancy discussion with the perinataologist assigned to our case, Dr. Jeff Korotkin. We had met with Dr. Korotkin before when we had our genetic counselling session last year. He is very aware of what happened with our son Royce and that we are both carriers for the rare genetic abnormality that can cause persistent hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia of infancy, or PHHI; otherwise commonly known as nesidioblastosis. He knows that we have a one in four chance of delivering another child that has this disease, and that is why he is involved with the close monitoring of this pregnancy...his specialty is high-risk pregnancies. In fact, he was also keenly interested in the overnight pre-enclamptic episode that may or may not have induced premature labor, so we have been monitoring Bridget's blood pressure as well. Pre-enclampsia, or worse yet, full-blown enclampsia, is not as dangerous for an unborn baby as it is for the mother...in fact, the only real way to stop it is to no longer be pregnant, i.e. deliver the baby. However, the trick is to keep the baby in the womb as long as possible before delivering to give it the best possible chance of survival out of the womb. Royce was delivered at 35 weeks, so that in itself was not a terribly bad time, but ten weeks earlier, and it is a very dangerous situation for a premature infant.
Well, so far, so good according to Dr. Korotkin! Baby is currently right on target with size measurements, so they are sticking to the current timetable, 16 weeks 4 days as of November 21st, so they are going to keep the due date of May 5th, 2004. However, he was unable to get a good look at all the internal organs, so he wants to do another ultrasound in three weeks. By then, we should be able to tell the sex of the baby! We could clearly see that Royce was a boy with his ultrasound at 20 weeks, so...
If the baby is a girl, we are going to use the girl name we had chosen the first time around, Rowan Elizabeth Ann. If it turns out to be a boy again, well...let's just say there will be some arguing about what name(s) to use! ;-) It has already been decided that one of the middle names (the first one or second one has not been decided as of yet) will definately be Charles, which is a name heavily used on both sides of my family, but will be used in this case particularly in memory of my dad, who has been gone a little over a year now...but also in memory of both my grandfathers, also named Charles. With Royce, we had used Augustus as a second middle name, and Augustus is a family name on the Reinwald side of Bridget's family. William was an obvious middle name (it is MY name...LOL). Royce is actually Bridget's dad's real first name (he never uses it...goes by "Gus" for Augustus)...and he was in turn named Royce after his dad's younger brother who died young.
I am inclined to use another first name that begins with "R". Already, we have a girl's name that begins with "R", so why not? While growing up, my nickname Bill and my sister's nickname Beth sounded close together. I think it would sound cool! Bridget is not so convinced yet.
Anyway, I have been going through baby boy names that begin with the letter "R" just in case! I want to have a list of potential names to show Bridget in case it IS a boy we are having again!
Back to the ultrasounds...with Royce, we did not have an ultrasound until the 20th week, which is apparently normal if they don't anticipate a problem. So far, with this baby, not counting the intial trans-vaginal ultrasound (which we had with both pregnancies early on to confirm a fetal hearbeat, etc.), we will have had three ultrasounds by 20 weeks, if only beacuse this pregnany is considered high-risk because of a past history of problems. Anyway, with Royce's 20-week scan, the doctor who saw the new measurements moved his due date up two weeks at the time because he seemed larger than the projected date...well, as that turned out, that was a potential red flag for a problem that of course no one would have realized at the time...very much like gestational diabetes, apparently babies with blood sugar/insulin issues in the womb like Royce would actually be larger overall, and the internal organs would also be larger. It is easy to overlook this and just think that the baby is "further along". This is part of the reason why Dr. Korotkin wants to do another ultrasound so soon...to properly measure the internal organs, but so far, the body measurements (skull diameter, femur and arm bone length, etc.) are all on target, so this is a good indicator.
You have to realize that the genetic variety of what causes nesidioblastosis is impossible to detect in-utero. This is still a relatively new condition as far as medical documentation of the disease is concerned...it was only just identified as a disease just a few years before World War II...and the genetic variety was only identified about 20-25 years ago...in fact, it is estimated at the time of Royce's birth/death that there were only about 50 or so documented births with this condition that had a genetic cause. There is no test in existence that can simply tell you genetically that an unborn baby has this condition, not even from an amniocentisis. Unfortunately, they have no idea what to look for until soembody has a baby that actually has the condition (like us)...and thereafter they can monitor things and know what to look for.
In our case, large baby size in-utero would be a definate red-flag, but then again we are highly likely to have larger-than-average babies. Though Bridget was six pounds and change when she was born, she is a big adult. Likewise, I was a big baby when born, 8 pounds 14 ounces! Royce was 7 pounds 11 ounces at even 35 weeks, which could have meant a close to or even greater than ten pound baby when full-term! So, having a seven pound or greater baby at 35 weeks is a real possibility even without a problem, so this in itself is not as big a red flag as you would first think. Dr. Korotkin even made a point of saying this!
The next thing that Bridget has noted was that for part of her second trimester and all the way until delivery she had an unusual craving for sweets. Bridget does not have the sweet tooth that I have, so in hindsight it may look unusual, but at the time you just chalk it up to pregnancy cravings. What is speculated is that her body was trying to compensate to a the amount of sugars being depleted from her own bloodstream by Royce, who as a result of his condition in-utero was already cranking out the insulin from his pancreas out of control and compensating the sugar shortage in his body by taking it from Bridget's bloodstream via the placenta...the real problems of course began once he was independent of Bridget.
So far, none of these things have manifested, but again, it is too soon to really know.
This is not to mention that Bridget started to have elevated blood pressure levels during her last month of pregnancy, and in fact went pre-enclamptic overnight, which may or may not have set her off into premature labor. Dr. Korotkin has expressed much interest in this and is wanting us to regularly monitor Bridget's blood pressure. So far, it has been quite normal, but again, it is too soon to tell.
One thing is for sure, this pregnancy has been a lot easier on Bridget! She had the "morning sickness" period, but this has already passed and it wasn't as severe. With Royce, she felt nauseated ALL the time, day or night, and still felt that way even after she vomited, so vomiting did not help her feel any better...and this went on for over two months...this time, she hardly felt nausea, and only felt it moments before she had to vomit, which was not nearly as much and for a shorter period of time...maybe five weeks. She still feels VERY tired all the time and she hates that. I think I told all of you before that Bridget hates being pregnant...more precisely the way she feels...but even she admits it has been much better this time around.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner...Bridget's parents, Gus and Carolyn Reinwald, are going to visit with us during this time!
We wish all of you a happy and safe Thanksgiving Holiday! For us, there is much to be thankful about this year...!
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