Tuesday's Dr Visit (long medical post)

Had another doctor visit yesterday, which went very well. Unfortunately, my doctor is starting to get bad about running behind, so I had to wait close to an hour, but, the minute he came in the room and we started talking, I knew without a doubt it was worth it. He is such a good doctor, and spent alot of time with me, even though the longer he stayed with me, the further behind he got with his other patients. A number of times he asked me how I was doing, was I worried or okay, etc. I really appreciated that - I could tell he really cared.

All my stats were good, and we did a sonogram on the portable machine. Little girl Moore definitely looks like a human baby now - I mean, all parts are distinguishable. And when we first started, Dr B said it looked like she was sucking her thumb. He wasn't able to get a super good look at my cervix, since we were only using the portable machine, but he was able to get a good enough view that he was satisfied with the cervical length and didn't see any signs of dilation or funneling, etc. He also said the placenta is sitting high in the uterus, which rules out anything like placenta previa. I still haven't gotten a complete anatomy scan on the baby's heart (we'll do that on the "big" machine at 26 weeks), but my doctor looked at the heart some yesterday and said that what he could see looked good.

After the sonogram, I was thinking the appointment was over, but the Dr B sprung up some new things for me to think about/research. He is suggesting that we give the baby steroid shots around week 26ish to prepare the baby in case I go into labor prematurely. The short answer of why we would do this is that it would greatly increase baby's chances of survival in the NICU (neonatal ICU) should that happen. While I was not unfamiliar with babies being born prematurely being given steroid shots, I always thought it was done last minute in the hospital before giving birth. Apparently this would be done in the next month, whether I go into premtaure labor or make it to 40 weeks, and he said it wouldn't hurt the baby either way.

My doctor has been, for the most part, pretty confident about this pregnancy, and the majority of things we are doing (frequent sonos, progesterone shots, etc) have been pretty much for Adam's and my sake - anything to help us feel better and less worried. So, I asked Dr B if this was another thing like that, or if he really thought we should do this. (I guess I was a little apprehensive about it and also wondered if it would be overkill). But apparently he thought it would be a very reasonable thing to do, and even said we'd be kicking ourselves if we didn't do it and I then went into premature labor (at that point, he said there's not enough time for the steroids to do their work). So when he put it that way, I started to feel like maybe it was something we should do. I'll be doing my research on it in the next week or so.

THEN he said we might also want to consider shaving off a few weeks of the pregnancy and inducing me early, to get the baby out before something bad (like another abruption, which apparently tends to happen at the end of pregnancies, unlike my experience) happens. To do this, we'd need to do a late term amniocentesis (which, he said, is very safe that late in the pregnancy) to verify that baby's lungs were developed, and then we could induce, as early as 37 weeks. While I know that it is not preferable to be induced (for a number of reasons), in this case it sounds like it would be worth it, if we could jump the gun and get the baby out safely before anything bad happens.

To say I was overwhelmed by all this yesterday was an understatement. I didn't know either of these options were even out there (for me, I mean). I hope that Adam and I can do our best to make the right decision with both of these...