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April 11, 2008

ok, so i haven't written one of these yet! i guess i will start at the beginning. i found out i was pregnant on nov. 7th using a first response test. i started having "all day sickness" at around 7 or 8 weeks. when i was 10 weeks preggo i spent two days in the hospital from severe dehydration and malnutrition due to the fact that i couldn't keep anything down, not even water. talk about misery! i started taking zofran for the nausia and vomitting and started feeling a little better by about 14 weeks. things were pretty uneventful until my husband, kevin, and i went for our 20 week ultrasound. the tech started at the head of our baby and worked her way down and everything looked fine until we checked for the sex and something that looked like a bubble was attached to my baby. the tech was being very quiet and i could tell she was trying to get a good look at it. i asked what the bubble was and she said she didn't know. well, as anyone can imagine, i burst into tears and felt the worst feeling of my life. the doctor came into the room to take a look and said that he thought it was the baby's bladder outside her body and that it is a condition called bladder exstrophy. the next morning we drove the 40 minutes to the big hospital in downtown chattanooga to see the specialist and he agreed and thought it was the bladder, and also said we were having a girl. well we didn't see the specialist again until 24 weeks and when we went back this time it didn't look like the bubble was on the abdomen at all but coming off of her butt. we also saw her bladder on the inside and saw her pee. now the doctors said it was a tumor called sacrococcygeal teratoma. it is a tumor that forms off the end of the tail bone and needed to be removed after birth. the scary part is that these things can get very large, even the size of the baby and if they get to big they can take blood away from the baby, causing heart failure. fortunetly hers is pretty small compared to how big they can get and looks to be cystic. we had an MRI a couple of weeks ago and the doctors said that the tumor doesn't have much of a blood supply, but that there is a small part of the tumor in the pelvic region. we have to go to the specialist every week until the baby is born to have an ultrasound and monitor the tumor. the looks good right now and hopefully the tumor will just stay the same and not grow. we have never prayed so much in our lives, but i now in my heart that my baby is going to be ok. we are naming her caroline, and i can not wait to bring her home! my hubby and i are so excited to bring a little girl into our family!