Anencephaly Ultrasound and Doc Update

I had another appointment yesterday and it went better than the one last week. Whether that be because I was in a better place mentally, or it actually went better, I don't know. But I felt better and didn't cry the entire time. I was able to ask questions without my voice choking up and voice concerns without turning into a blubbery mess.

I gained 3.5lbs. Woah. My bad. I have been making an extra effort to eat more food this past week and I've been SUPER conscious of doing very little to help the bleed heal. Goal attained? Eek.

They did the ultrasound to look at the all the heart beats and we got another set of pictures. I didn't share the last ones, but here are the new ones. The tech was like, do you want any pictures of baby C? I was like, UM YES! She said that some people request not to have any pictures or further info about the sick baby because they don't want to get more emotionally attached, etc.

Here's baby A and it's right at the bottom of my uterus, resting with it's back on my cervix:



Here's baby B and its to my right on the upper side of my uterus:



And here's baby C, located on my left, right under my stomach:



Now, if you scroll back up, you can see that baby A and B have round heads and you can see their profiles. While baby C has a perfect little body, he has no profile or slope to it's head at all :( They also did a "frontal view" of this baby and I just couldn't believe it. The doctor said that it had "classic bone formation" of a baby with anencephaly. Its head looked like it stopped at the eyebrows and the eye sockets were very wide set, almost to the sides of it's head. It looked similar to a frog's bone structure. I thought it looked similar to a troll doll because it's brain was completely open and extended very far above it's head like hair.

I will NEVER forget that image. Poor baby.

The doctor wanted to get that view so that before he sent me to see Dr. Adashek there was a definite confirmation of a terminal diagnosis for that baby.

Dr. Bolnick looked closely at my hemorrhage and said that it definitely looked stable. It didn't look bigger. I thought it looked smaller. He said that it could be smaller, but he couldn't tell because the babies had grown a lot this past week and he couldn't tell if the hemorrhage was just getting redistributed as the babies grew and pushed into other areas, or if it was actually smaller. Either way, I was glad that he said it was stable. I haven't had any active bleeding this week, and for the first time since this whole thing started, I am starting to pass actual blood clots.

Dr. Bolnick said that based on Dr. Adashek's experience and the fact that the bleed looks stable, that he feels confident that Dr. Adashek will feel comfortable doing the reduction as long as there are no changes in the next few days. We'll see. We are waiting for a list of risks, pros and cons, and statistics to make the decision. Dr. Bolnick said that the risk of carrying 3 babies to myself and the health of the other 2 is greater than the risk of doing the reduction, but we're going to wait and talk to Dr. Adashek and see what he thinks.

Thank you for all of your prayers and sending happy thoughts our way. We really feel every single one. I cannot tell you how encouraging it is to get messages and texts throughout the week from you guys.

In other news, construction on the upstairs room starts monday! And we bought a new car. I need to blog more...I'm a little behind.