I'm sorry if this is posted in the wrong forum, but this is the closest I could find to what I needed.

My wife is at 16 1/2 weeks and the baby has just been diagnosed with severe cystic hygroma and hydrops. We were told that there were mutiple cysts and the perinatal specialist has told us that the main one was twice the size of the baby's head. As we understand it, cystic hydroma and hyrdops are fatal.

The perinatal specialist we saw was very uncommitted about the prospects for our baby to survive. He essentially just told us that the baby had pretty severe cystic hydroma and hydrops, but wouldn't say whether it was a good idea to continue with this pregnancy or not. We were first tipped off about the conditions by her OBGYN who called us and told us that the baby had "multiple congenital defects" and referred us to this perinatal specialist for a second opinion.

We have scheduled to terminate the pregnancy in a couple days, but we want to be absolutely sure that this isn't the kind of thing that can heal itself in the womb. I don't want my wife to have to go through the trauma of having the baby die inside of her, but I we also don't want her to go through the trauma of terminating it with any doubts about what we did. Should an ultrasound combined with the records from the first two ultrasounds be enough to make this kind of decision, or do we need to wait this out in hopes that something might change?

If there is a medical professional on this site who gives this kind of advice it would be greatly appreciated. Obviously you can't make a diagnosis without seeing an ultrasound and whatnot, but just a general guide as to what you've experienced in the past would be very helpful.