Calling All Prayer Warriors

Today I'm putting out a call to all of our friends of faith. We need some prayers.

I had an ultrasound today to check on the baby's growth. They've really been watching his growth because I had a very hard time delivering Jonah and we wanted to avoid that this time around. It had been about 6 weeks since the last check so at my appointment last Thursday the doctor ordered another ultrasound for today.

I was not prepared for the news that I got however. From the measurements that the OB tech took he is nowhere close to Jonah's or Bri's size. In fact, he is very small. From what they can tell he only weighs about 5 lbs 7 ounces, which makes him approximately the size of a baby at 34 weeks gestation instead of the 38 weeks that we are at. His growth has dropped from the 17th percentile which he was at at 32 weeks to the 4th percentile. Basically, he is no longer growing where he is.

The other thing that we discovered is that my amniotic fluid levels are very low. In fact they are right on the verge of what they consider to be dangerously low levels. Why this is we don't really know, and they only thing to really do about that is bedrest (yeah right! Like that's going to happen with a four and two year old) and increasing fluids (I already pee every 40 minutes...what more do you want me to do?!?!?!) Since they were going to induce me next week anyway the question then becomes whether one week of bedrest is really going to do anything. He may gain a couple ounces but it's not going to make that much of a difference in the long run.

So after the ultrasound I had to have a non-stress test done. If you've never done one it's really easy. All they do is hook you up to the fetal monitor and you push a button every time you feel the baby move. They look for 10 movements in 20 minutes. He passed that with flying colors which I knew he would, they just had to make sure that he wasn't in destress since my fluid levels are so low. So at least we know he's still happy in there, even if he doesn't have as much room to move around.

I asked the tech that had done the non-stress test when we just say enough is enough, let's get him out and she said it's when the growth falls below the 10th percentile, which we are way below that. So tomorrow I have to meet with another Doctor to go over everything and decide what the best course of action is. From where I stand, even though I never want to see a baby born premature, if he's not growing anymore on the inside let's get him out so he can start to grow again on the outside. Since we were going to be induced next week, what's one more week in the grand scheme of things!??! So that's where I stand (and pretty much everybody else that I've talked to, including the tech at the office!), which means that we could have a baby before the end of this week!

We will keep you all posted, we just ask for prayers that the doctors will make the right decision for our little guy and that we'll have the patience and the ability to accept whatever decision that may be. And prayers that he is just small and that there isn't anything else wrong with him. Hopefully we would have a clue to that already but maybe not. I'll post again tomorrow after I meet with the doctor again and hopefully have some anwers!