Cerclage Tomorrow & Other Exciting News

Well, tomorrow is the big day finally.  I went to Temple to see a perinatologist at the Scott & White hospital on Friday.  And despite the fact that the original part of the hospital I visited is right out of the Twilight Zone and full of Wal-Mart people, it was a good visit.

The peri. I saw was extensively experienced in high risk pregnancies, very forthcoming and not bad on the eyes in disagreement with anything the previous peri. here in Austin had told me.

He did an ultrasound to check my cervical length and found it to be measuring much larger than the last two, more than 3 cm where as neither of the last were over 2.5 cm.  This news pretty much immediately took a lot of stress and anxiety away. 

He also gave me some numbers I'll be hanging onto pretty tightly: cerclages have been shown to reduce the risk of preterm labor by about a third, additionally progesterone therapy (the weekly shots I start next week) have been shown to have the same reduction in risk.  I verified that that meant a total of 2/3 risk reduction with both treatments.  It's not a guarantee, or even really good odds, but it's better than half and better than I expected.  It's also much better than Bryce's odds of surviving were when he was born and look at him now!  So, I'll gladly take 2/3!

I also asked him during the ultrasound if he had any guesses on the baby's sex.  He was fairly certain it looks like a boy though 15 weeks is pretty early to tell.  Here is the picture he gave me for Caleb, I'll let you try to figure it out and judge for yourself:

Caleb and I were both kind of hoping for a girl, since we already have a boy, but if two parents ever just wanted a healthy baby it's these two.

The earliest they could get me on the surgery schedule is tomorrow and the peri. I saw Friday won't be on but he said that the lady peri. who will do the surgery is very good and has LOTS of experience. Yay!

She also has a full morning of c-sections already scheduled so we have to arrive (in Temple) by 9 a.m. and I can't eat after midnight but it may be afternoon before they are able to work me into her surgical schedule.  I'm pretty excited that Caleb's new boss is letting him come with me, he hasn't had a chance to see or hear the baby at all yet and will probably get to tomorrow.  Happy Valentine's Day to us!

And before I leave you all with that bit of good news all around I have just one more exciting bit to share.  Bryce has been practicing walking with his posterior walker for a while now and seems to be really getting it!  His PT (physical therapist) is nearly as excited as I am, which is to say very, very, very!!!

Here is a short video we took on Saturday while practicing.  He made it from the back door to the front door, around through the kitchen and back to the living room on Friday for his PT and my dad.  Today he did the same but with a loop around the dining table - baby steps, baby!

It's funny, I was reviewing my YouTube upload history and realized that a year ago we were trying to get Bryce to stop rolling and start crawling, 7 months ago he started pulling up and today he's starting to walk.  His progress in the last year really astounds me.  We've worked hard for a long time to get here and I couldn't be a prouder momma!!

I'll try to update after we get home tomorrow to let everyone know how to surgery went and what's next on the agenda.  Until then, thanks as always for checking in on our little family!

Play Date Fun

I was perusing some friend's blogs whilst trying my best to take it easy yesterday when I ran across a picture of Bryce! What a nice surprise that was.

I feel like poor Bryce hasn't been the main subject here at Bryce Moline lately - which is a bit of a misnomer. Not to mention, I felt that the blog generally needed a bit of a lightening up.

So I figured why not follow Mackenzie's lead.  My friend, fellow special needs mom and head honcho over at pforpeanuts has the cutest blog and even cuter twins: Ellisa and Hudson, who happen to have equally adorable names.

Anywhose...I've been trying to get Bryce around some more little ones whenever I can. He is quickly outgrowing the babies in the infant room at his day care and it's just good for us both.

Especially when we can spend some time with a couple of mommas who get the special needs mom thing. You knew it was "a thing", didn't ya?  Only kidding of course, I just mean that there is an instant understanding with other moms who get it.  "It" being the all at once absolute joy and overwhelming reality of caring for a special needs kiddo.

But we, and by we I mean I, have been grossly unsuccesful in this endeavor. Bryce's therapy and doctor schedule coupled with work and daily chores makes fitting anything into our schedule a challenge. But then trying to coordinate our hectic schedule with one or more other hectic schedules means our play dates are sporadic at best.

I am working on it though and looking forward to a lighter load in the summer. Which in Texas we know is always looming ever so hotly right over the horizon...but I digress.

We were able to host a play date at our house a while back and Mackenzie was saavy enough to snap a picture (thanks, Kenzie!) when I wasn't. And what a treat when weeks later, after having almost completely forgotten about it, I happen upon her post Peanuts Play Dates and Bryce's face!

Just a little nudge from the powers that be to keep trying to make those play dates work - for us both.

No Surgery Today

Thank you to everyone who reached out to me over the last few days with words of encouragement, support and love. You can't possibly know how much that means to me.

And for those who don't know already, I'm sorry for the late update but I am not having my cerclage placed this morning.

A nurse practitioner, but more importantly, dear friend of ours, called me Monday morning and gave me some insight into the risks of having the cerclage placed by an inexperienced OB. I, unfortunately, had no clue that there was a likelihood that the cerclage could be ineffective if placed improperly. I had been led to believe by the OB I saw last week that a cerclage is a cerclage and as long as no complications occurred during the surgery it would be all that it could be. Kind of like the Army.

But my friend has some personal experience with ineffective cerclages placed in a friend's cervix, resulting in the tragic loss of one baby in the second trimester and, bless her heart, even another in the third. As you can imagine, that little bit of information just put me over the edge.

I called Caleb immediately and explained my conversation with our friend. He was quick to say he was happy I was going to seek alternatives because he had a "bad feeling" about the other OB. Poor guy knows how stressed out I am and probably weighed the added stress of insisting I find another option against his bad feeling and decided it better to keep quiet. Sorry, hon.

So the search for an alternative began. And it was a full day of phone calls on Monday that finally resulted in my appointment yesterday morning with the intake nurse at Scott & White's Round Rock clinic. I wasn't expecting much from them, considering my other experience with S/W so far, and was really concerned about further delaying the procedure that was already 5 days and counting behind the "ideal placement for optimum effectiveness" as per the perinatologist I'd seen at North Austin Maternal Fetal Medicine. But I felt I had little other option and hadn't actually canceled my procedure or pre-op yet.

The nurse blew me away. Maybe it was because I told her Bryce's birth story and then showed her two pictures of him - one of the night he was born and one of him eating a push pop last week with the sweetest grin he could possibly muster for a mother constantly taking pictures of him. Who could resist this sweet face?

And remember this?  {Seems like just yesterday and a million years ago all at once.}

She immediately left the office and asked every nurse and OB available in the office what the best thing to do was. She genuinely cared and clearly understood my concern for the situation. I know that there are distinct limitations to what people can do, especially when it comes to doctors and specialists and surgery scheduling. But I just wanted someone to try and she did. Thank you, Laurie!

And so did the OB's in the office - they told her they wouldn't touch my cervix with ... I don't know, something you don't touch a cervix with....until that cerclage was safely placed by a perinatologist. I knew they didn't have one here and I had come to terms with the fact that I would likely be driving to Temple. But the peri. they suggested is, of course, on vacation this entire week. Laurie promised me she would call his nurse, send my records and plead my case first thing this morning when she was scheduled to be back, in an effort to get me on his surgery schedule Monday.

And so I left the office equally uneasy and relieved. And not one hour later Laurie called to say that she found another peri. office at the S/W clinic in Temple who could get me in on Friday. So to Temple I go on Friday.

I'm still waiting to hear back if I need to have someone drive me Friday because we could be in surgery or if I can go alone. Since my appointment isn't until 1:20 p.m. I'm assuming the latter but my gut feeling about this whole waiting game is getting increasingly bad.

That could be a result of my intense mom desire to do everything possible for this baby, to make no mistake and have no regrets. Or it could be that same sixth sense that regularly woke me in the night the weeks and months after Bryce was born and was fighting so hard to survive.

I've been trying with all my might to stop weighing pros and cons, stop second guessing my decision to cancel the cerclage today and stop wondering how I'll deal with it if it turns out that waiting was the wrong decision. I went to work yesterday after the appointment, I got up early and cleaned the kitchen today, I am going to tackle laundry and meet Bryce's new occupational therapist and do my best to distract my whirling mind from the omnipresent questioning that is plaguing it.

Freaking Out

I started this post on Wednesday, just after my appointment with the new OB.  Here is where I was emotionally at that point:

For the most part, I try to save my freak outs for the privacy of our home and the likes of my poor husband. But today is just not one of those days.

Sorry.

I just left the new OB, whom I had to pick randomly from a list of 12 on Scott & White's website. She was nice enough - but she said that SW won't pay for my perinatologist to do the cerclage because she can. She's done 2 before so she'll admittedly be nervous but I shouldn't worry too much. Ha.

She did another ultrasound and said that my cervix is definitely shortening already so we need to get this done ASAP but it doesn't have to be today. She also had to tell me that putting holes in my cervix means there is a chance that my water could break and we could lose the baby.

She said a lot of other stuff - like we'll do the surgery at St. David's in Georgetown, I'll be awake but numb from the waist down and draped like a c-section so I can't see anything, and I should expect to be able to leave a couple of hours after.  Mostly I heard the sounds of the Peanut's teachers, "wah wha wha...."

I've been trying to get back to finish the post, I know a lot of you are wondering what is going on but I've also been trying to wrap my head around everything.

I think I'm mostly there now though still freaking out about the fact that my cervix is shortening already, at only 14 weeks, about the risks with the cerclage and the chances of getting somewhere near full term with this baby. 

Not to mention, worried at the news from the OB that if I go into labor before 36 weeks and they can't stop the delivery that I'll have the baby at the Round Rock facility - NO NICU THERE - and they'll transfer the baby to TEMPLE.  But if they can stop the labor then they'll transfer us both to Temple.  I'm not sure which of those outcomes scares me more - having yet another baby sent to a NICU I've never seen without me or leaving Caleb and Bryce at home while I go to Temple by myself.

I have to just stop there because I'll get my anxiety levels all out of control if I let myself go down that road even a couple of steps.

It's funny though, not exactly ha ha funny but odd to think, at 14 weeks with Bryce we were talking names, planning his nursery and looking forward to finding out if he was a he or a she. 

We were blissfully naive. 

But I can't help but wonder if I'm already showing signs, maybe I was with him too.  Maybe if we'd gone to a traditional OB instead of a birthing center they would have done more ultrasounds and caught the changes in my cervix.  Maybe we could have prevented his preterm birth and therefore all of the challenges he faces on a daily basis would be nonexistent.  Maybe.

Please don't bother commenting about how I shouldn't go there, about how questioning the past and blaming myself are neither going to change anything nor help my own mental state.  I know this.  But I also know that if you were me, you'd do the same thing.  I know.

All questioning and blaming aside, I'm resolving to focus on resting, getting over this sinus infection before surgery day and distracting myself to the utmost until pre-op on Tuesday afternoon.

Wish me luck, ya'll - I'm gonna need it.

We're Officially Effective

As of late, I feel anything but effective. Bryce, and thanks to Bryce, I too have been sick twice in only three weeks. Getting normal, every day tasks done is a challenge but getting insurance and related issues dealt with is a whole other kind of challenge.

BUT, as of today we finally have maternity insurance. It's nothing great (aka HMO) but it's so much better than nothing! I had to pick a new OB from the plan and schedule an appointment so that they can try to submit an authorization for coverage of the perinatologist here in Austin. The earliest they could get me in is Wed. morning and hopefully they'll understand the situation and work with us to make that happen. If all goes smoothly we may be in the hospital before the end of the week getting a cerclage put in.

If not, well - I just don't know. As my dad says, "We'll burn that bridge when we get to it."

Thanks everyone for keeping up with us!

 

p/s We're also officially into the second trimester - 13 weeks, 3 days today!  YAY!