and the winner is...

The University of 

UTAH!!

That's right!  We made our decision - and it was tough! 

John was accepted at The Ohio State University, which was kind of our dream school.  For some strange reason we both just loved the idea of moving to Ohio.  And they have some programs that really interested him. 

But, he was also accepted at the University of Utah.  Which is another great school, even if it is ranked a little lower than OSU.  Don't get me wrong - we're not settling for less here.  Utah also has some programs that John is interested in.  And it's [obviously] a heck of a lot closer to family. 

We did maybe have to let the baby nugget have a little bit of a say in our decision, too.  Since her due date is the middle of July, and she'll be spending quite a bit of time in the hospital after her surgery, we had to think about how that would affect our family being together.  Law school generally starts toward the middle of August, and if we had chosen Ohio that would mean that John would have to leave me and the baby here for an indefinite amount of time before I could safely move across the country with her to join him.  Not an ideal situation.  And we're not saying that John will get to see us very frequently anyway, but a $50 tank of gas and 7-hour drive sounds a whole lot better than a $600 last-minute plane ticket and at least one layover.  

I might still be talking myself into this decision, just a little bit.  But we feel really good about going to Utah.  It's a great school.  We'll be surrounded by friends and fairly close to family.  And hey, the Salt Lake Temple isn't exactly a drawback!!

Now we just have to find somewhere to live...  anyone have an extra house in SLC they feel like giving us for the next three [or four] years?!!

No baby updates today.  Sorry.  She still transforms from a sloth to a ninja as soon as bedtime comes around, but she's starting to get a little cramped in there.  At least, that's what my ribs are telling me.  I get to take the dreaded glucose test next week, so that should be interesting.  I'm actually a little excited for it.  I mean, it's the one time in my life [except for any future pregnancies] that a doctor is going to tell me to drink straight sugar.  I'm pretty psyched.

twenty-six.

Our sweet little nugget is twenty-six weeks and two days big.  She is also still a drama queen.

We went in today for another ultrasound to see if we could learn a little bit more about her heart.  Silly girl thought it was a good idea to block their view with her arm for thirty minutes, and then roll over as soon as they found a good angle to check out her aorta.  She was crazy the whole time.  She kept moving around and jumping so they couldn't get a consistent picture.  I felt bad for the sonographer.  And the doctor, since he had to keep waiting to see what he needed to see.

Eventually they got some pretty decent views of everything they wanted to check out.  She still has the same heart defects.  She still needs surgery before we'll be allowed to take her home.  And she's still a little camera-shy.

We learned a little bit more about the surgeries she'll need.  Which helped ease our concerns a little.   

They'll do a couple different things to repair the silly little mistakes she made.  First, they'll put a patch over the VSD and create openings from each side into the right artery.  Then, since her aorta is a little too-small-for-comfort, they'll use her pulmonary artery to reconstruct the aorta and make sure it has branches going to all the right places.  Then they'll replace her pulmonary artery with a cadaver-transplant.  It sounds a little backwards at first, but since the cadaver artery won't grow with her heart, it's much safer to use it instead of the pulmonary artery.  And using her own pulmonary artery tissue to repair the aorta means it will be able to grow with her.

After she's born they'll make sure she's stable and check her heart to make sure what we think is wrong is what's actually wrong.  Then they'll put her on some medication to keep blood flowing through her aorta while she gets used to life on the outside.  It will probably be a few days before they actually do any surgery, which is nice, because I won't be so drugged-up while it's happening.  After surgery she'll spend some time in the NICU to recover, they'll also want to make sure she's eating/breathing/growing - all that good stuff - before they send her home.  That generally lasts around 2-4 weeks.  After that, as long as everything goes according to plan, she'll be a pretty normal baby.  With seven different doctors.  :)

She will need another couple surgeries as she grows, to replace the pulmonary artery with larger ones, to accommodate increased blood-flow.  But that won't be for at least a year.

She's a pretty normal-sized baby.  Her growth is in the 40th percentile.  Which makes me feel better about her no being a giant sasquatch like my brothers.  There's still some extra fluid in her kidney, but it's not enough to really concern the doctors.  They're just going to keep an eye on it.

We'll have another ultrasound in May, and I think all the doctors are hoping she learns some manners by then.  Really, I kind of like that she's so uncooperative, since it means I get to spend more time watching her on the big screen!  :)

hello, april!

Hello, springtime!!

It's so nice outside.  Not nice enough to coax me off the couch, but still pretty nice.  haha.  And we're heading straight into summer, which me and my bump are NOT looking forward to.  It's going to be a long four months...

In other baby-news, we got some pretty nice test results back this week.  When the doctor's initially saw the heart defects they started warning us that it could be caused by a chromosomal defect.  Something like Down's Syndrome or Trisomy 18.  They recommended that we have a blood test done that will look at fragments of the baby's DNA to determine whether there's a missing or extra chromosome.  I have no idea how they can do that.  It's remarkable.  But they drew blood, ran the test, and everything came back negative.  We are now down to a 1 in 10,000 chance that the baby has one of those, or a related condition.  I can handle those odds.

We are also 100% sure she's a girl.  No second-guessing there!! 

John and I are also coming up on our TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY!  Yep.  That's right.  We made it through another whole year!  And even though we're not headed on any big exciting vacation this year, we will get to spend the evening together and go out on a hot date.  That's not something we've had the chance to do in a while, with work and other things getting in the way.

We have another ultrasound scheduled for next week.  The perinatologist and pediatric cardiologist will both be there, so if any of you have thought up any questions you'd like answered PLEASE send them to us.  Our list is kind of short.  We're not really sure how all this is supposed to go, being first-timers and all, and could definitely use any advice you've got.

bump.

I finally got around to taking a picture of my bump.

Please ignore the messy hair, no make-up, and double-chin that I'm sporting. 

Someday the nugget will see this picture, look at me, and say "What the HECK were you thinking?!"

The nugget also likes to play this game... She spends aaallllllllll day sleeping, lounging around, conserving energy, and then, right around bedtime, BLAMO!! she's awake and ready to party.

I love the internet.

So, ever since last week's super-informative trips to the doctor, I've been trying to figure out exactly which heart defects our sweet baby nugget has. I realize that I could have just called the doctor's office and had the answer in a minute, but I don't usually get off work until 9, and I never remember by the next morning.  And I don't like talking to people.  And I love to Google things.  Anyway, thanks to the wonderful, all-knowing internet I've finally figured it out!! (Sort of, I guess I could still be wrong.)

Our sweet little drama-queen baby nugget has a double-outlet right ventricle and a ventricular septal defect.

Double-outlet right ventricle (DORV) is a congenital heart defect in which both the pulmonary artery and aorta come from the same pumping chamber. This causes problems in the body because the right ventricle pumps oxygen-poor blood, which means that's what the aorta is carrying to the rest of the body (instead of the oxygen-rich blood it would get from the left ventricle).

from childrenshospital.org

DORV always includes a VSD [we already talked about that one here], and that helps out, because it allows the oxygen-rich blood to mix into the right ventricle and then be carried to the body. Unfortunately, there's not quite enough oxygen-rich blood getting to the body, so the heart ends up working even harder than it would normally have to.  There is also usually increased blood-pressure in the lungs because the pulmonary artery receives more blood than it should.

Even after reading all about this defect and the risks and problems associated with it, I'm still not totally freaked out.  I mean, I'm sure I will be a absolute mess once everything's actually happening, but right now all I can think is how lucky we are to know about our little nugget's problems this early so we, and the doctors, can prepare for everything.

I also spent some time looking at pictures of babies after having heart surgery, just to prepare myself, and while it is so sad to see such tiny little bodies hooked up to so many different things, I wasn't shocked by the visual.  I know it will be different when it's my own baby, and all I can do is look at her lying there and pat her sweet little hand.  But I'm still so grateful to live somewhere that can provide the care that she'll need.

If you want to learn more, or if you just don't understand what DORV is from the way I explained it here, you can find more information and pictures on the Scripps website.  Or you can Google it for yourself.  But, please, don't freak out when you read about all the complications and problems that can arise from this kind of heart defect.  A lot of the more serious things that can happen are things that our baby will never have to deal with because her heart will be fixed before it can start causing those problems. 

We are still very optimistic about the nugget's condition.  She's a drama queen, for sure, but we'll wait to deal with that once she starts talking  :)

pregnant lady problems.

[These are all pointless complaints that I want to keep track of to show the nugget someday.  You don't have to read them.]

As soon as I'm fully dressed [we're talking buttoned my pants and everything] I  immediately  have to go to the bathroom.  And if I don't, the nugget takes it upon herself to not-so-gently remind me - by kicking me straight in the bladder every few seconds.

Who am I kidding?  None of my pants button-up anymore.

I wake up at 5am, regularly, because the nugget has decided it's the perfect time to practice her Thriller moves.  The problem?  Even after she's settled back down I can't fall asleep again.  And then, just when my body has relaxed enough that I can mayyyybeee get into that half-asleep stage, she's back at it.

My feet swell.  A lot.  It's gross, and it hurts, and it takes a full day of just laying around for them to feel better.  [Not for the swelling to go down, that only takes a couple hours.  Don't panic.]

I can't comfortably cross my legs.

Sometimes I tell the nugget to stop kicking/punching/kung-fu fighting my displaced organs and she listens.  She listens so well that I won't feel her for hours, and then I start to freak out and beg her to do something, anything, just so I know she's still there.  She also listens to that, and the cycle repeats itself.  My only comfort is that, while she does seem to have too much of John's loophole-finding skills in her, she may actually turn out to be a very well-behaved baby.

Getting dressed has become a legitimate chore.  There has always been too many layers, and now elastic bands and pant-expanders, and camisoles, and extra-long shirts, and belts to prove to the world that I still have some flattering attributes...  It's a work-out.

Baby registries are the worst.  How am I supposed to know what kind of bottle she'll like or how big her baby-sasquatch feet will be?  I also hate Target.com.

Another qualm with the baby registry is that we don't really know when the nugget will get to come home.  Or how big she'll be when she does.  I'm assuming that babies recovering from open-heart surgery tend to be a little on the small side for a while.  But then I look at my baby pictures, and even sickly I would have been a mammoth.  So I decided to be optimistic and act like I'm going to bring home a normal-sized baby, maybe four to six weeks after she's born.

I'm hungry all the time.  Especially in the morning, when just the thought of food makes me feel queasey.  And at night, when I'm too tired/lazy to get anything to snack on.

The nugget went straight from practically motionless to training for the 2024 Olympic diving team.   Really, I think I just missed out on the whole "fluttery" stage of her movements.  Nothing feels much different than it always has, she's just getting stronger.

I can't shave my legs in the shower.  I have to be sitting, and it takes twice as long.  I don't even want to think about shaving once my belly gets really big.

I have to sleep on my left side, snuggling with a body pillow to support my belly and legs, with another big pillow behind me to support my back and deter me from rolling over, and a huge blanket wrapped around everything to keep it all in place.  John loves it.

I have to go to the bathroom all the time.  Which I expected.  But I have to use the bathroom at all sorts of strange places.   And since we've already discussed how difficult getting dressed is, now we have to add getting re-dressed in a dirty, smelly public bathroom at Balboa Pier.

Snacks are only allowed to be healthy.  Apple slices and carrot sticks instead of Snicker's bars and potato chips.  Peeps don't count, they're 95% air.  Same with Slurpees.  And water instead of soda and juice.  Water is the least delicious beverage ever invented.

a science lesson.

The dog is sitting on the other side of the door breathing REALLY HARD, just to make sure I know how much he wants to come in and pee on all my stuff.  Can someone please tell me why he didn't move out with Tyler?

We have some news about Baby Nugget.  We actually have a lot of news about her.  She's kind of a big deal.  And a drama queen.

Are you ready for a science lesson?

On Friday we went in for the anatomy ultrasound with a perinatologist, just as a precaution, to check baby's stats and growth and make sure everything's where it needs to be and doing what it should be doing.  Unfortunately, they spotted a little trouble in her heart, so we went back on Monday to see a pediatric cardiologist and to have another ultrasound, this time with an echocardiogram for a more detailed picture.  It's a pretty cool thing.

What they found is that Baby Nugget has two heart defects.  One is called a VSD, which is basically an opening between the ventricles [lower chambers of her heart] that allows blood to pass through freely, both ways.  This one is the most common congenital heart defect, and can sometimes repair itself.  The other options are applying a patch between the ventricles through a catheter, or if it's too severe they would repair it through open-heart surgery.  [These are some pictures from the Mayo Clinic's slideshow.]

This is a healthy heart.

This is a heart with VSD.

The second defect is a little trickier to explain, and I can't seem to find any pictures.  A healthy heart has two arteries: the pulmonary on the right side and the aorta on the left.  Baby Nugget got a little confused while she was growing her heart and decided to just put them both on the same side.  Silly girl.  So while her blood is pumping just fine through her body as long as I'm doing all the breathing, once she takes her first breath that little mix-up will start to cause a lot of problems.  To repair this defect, she will definitely need open-heart surgery, immediately after birth.  They'll have to reroute the artery that's on the wrong side and possibly replace her aorta, because it's a little smaller than it should be.  The doctors are all really nice when they talk about this and really emphasize the fact that knowing about it now makes in about eight-thousand times easier to prepare for her upcoming birth and surgery.

Fortunately for us, we live in a time when doctors can monitor these issues on a regular basis and perform fancy surgeries to fix what's wrong before it causes any permanent damage to her development [hopefully].  We're lucky that we moved to Las Vegas, where we have access to a children's hospital that specializes in heart care.  Sunrise is the only children's hospital in the region that is equipped for pediatric open-heart surgery.  As much as we might have thought moving in with my parents was a backwards move, we are in the best place possible for this adventure. 

And that's exactly how we're looking at it.  As an adventure.  So far there's no reason to believe that this is a genetic condition or that it's being caused by anything else [we are waiting for results from a test for Down's Syndrome and that kind of condition, though].  We've met with a genetic counselor and she doesn't see any correlation between this and anything else we've told her about our family histories.  Sometimes these things just happen, and sometimes they happen to us.  But John and I both know that Heavenly Father wouldn't have sent us this special little nugget unless He knew we could handle her and love her just like He does.  We can, and we will.  And we'll have some really great reasons for why there's no money to buy her a car for her 16th birthday or pay for her college.

Aside from all of that, Baby Nugget is doing great!  She's right on track growth-wise, has all the right numbers of fingers and toes, and works night and day on her dance skills.  She is, however, a little camera-shy, and likes to keep her arms up in from of her face during ultrasounds, so all the pictures we have of her little face are too blurry.  That, and I think all babies look like creatures from the black lagoon in ultrasound images.  Or else I would post a couple pictures worth looking at, instead of just those hearts.

Ugh, ok.  Fine.  Here's one that actually kind of looks like a human.  Just don't make fun of her distinctly "Woodbury" nose... she'll grow into it!

We are very optimistic about all of this.  We really don't want all of our friends and family to feel like they need to walk on eggshells around us.  If you have questions PLEASE ask us!  It might not be something we've thought to ask the doctors yet, so really, any questions at all, send 'em our way!  And if you know anything about these heart defects, or know anyone who's been through all this, tell us about it!  We want to be open about everything.  We want everyone to know that we're doing ok, and we're confident that in a few short months we'll have a beautiful baby girl to show-off to the world.