Lia Kate Stone

Hey guys - I wanted to let everyone know the latest with us and the baby. First of all, our final amniocentesis results came in finally and it's all normal. Yea!! We went to see Dr Littrell, my regular OB yesterday, and everything pregnancy related looks good. We sat down and made a tenative game plan for the remaining pregnancy. I'll go back in three weeks for a sonogram to check the baby's growth. At around 32 weeks, she wants to admit me for the night at Baylor and give me Celestone injections which are steroids to help the baby's lungs mature quickly. This just covers us if for some reason she decides to come a little early. She wants me to do another amniocentesis at around 36-37 weeks to determine for sure how mature her lungs are before we go through with the induction at 38 or 39 weeks. We're still planning on having another fetal echocardiogram at Children's on May 19th. That will be a long day for us. This will enable the cardiologist and cardiovascular surgeon to take another look at her heart to see if anything has changed with her diagnosis. (This is where I'm praying they'll say - "This baby doesn't have a cardiac defect at all. You all prayed this whole thing away" Wouldn't that be something?) Anyway, after the echo (which will take about 2 hours), we'll go eat lunch and then tour the ICU that she'll be in. We're then scheduled to meet our surgeon at 3:00 that afternoon. So I'm sure we'll be drained at that point. That's all I have for you all at this point. The rest is waiting to see how she does and trying to prepare for her arrival like we would any other baby. We've been put in contact with two sets of parents whose children have undergone all or part of the surgeries we are supposed to encounter. These kids look and are doing great. One is a 22 month old who has had the first two surgeries. He's adorable and appears to be healthy and happy. The other is a 4 year old who I believe had the same two defects as our baby. He has undergone 4 open heart surgeries and is apparently doing well as well. It's nice to see pictures of these kids and talk with their moms. We may try and meet the 4 year old in person. He lives in Frisco. Once again, thank you all for your constant prayers concerning this sweet baby girl. I still can't believe she's a girl. We feel blessed that she is. I'm definitely going to lose my title of "Princess of the Family." She's already assumed that position. Please continue praying and I'll let you all know if anything changes.