Cautiously Optimistic

The past few weeks have been a bit upsetting and stressful, but I think we are finally past the worst of it, so keep your fingers crossed and your prayers coming! Thank you to all of you for all your support and I apologize that I have not gotten back to most of you.

We went to see a pediatric cardiologist as a follow-up to our last ultrasound and found out that the baby has a heart defect called tetralogy of fallot. At this point we are waiting on one more test result to come back and then we have another appointment with a different team of doctors down at CHOP to figure out the plan for the rest of the pregnancy, for delivery and for post-birth. As of right now, what the diagnosis means is that her heart did not form quite right and will need surgery after birth to correct it. She will then need to be followed by a cardiologist throughout her life to monitor her, but she should be able to live a relatively normal life (or as normal a life as she can lead with Kevin and I as her parents, haha!).

If the other test result comes back with an abnormal result, that will mean that there are some chromosomal problems which will affect the surgery and the rest of her life. So we are really hoping that the test comes back normal (so again, fingers crossed and prayers coming!).

We are concerned about the surgery although we feel that we are very lucky to be living close to CHOP because if our baby has to have surgery early in life, she might as well have it at one of the best children's hospitals in the nation, right? Our appointment there is next Wednesday, so hopefully after that we'll have all of our questions answered and we'll have a plan in place.

When we have more info, I'll pass it along to all of you, but for now keep sending your positive thoughts this way, they definitely help!