sezza, reading that brought tears to my eyes, it sounds so beautiful.
The reason I asked is apparently statistically girls tend to be stronger then boys when they are premmie, something to do with survival of the fittest and girls need to survive more then boys or something so that is good to.
Have fun thinking of names, keep giving her those pep talks and hope things work out for you. I look forward to sharing your journey with us if you are happy to do that.
Thinking of you and praying that your little one can stay put for another six weeks at least.
We have been watching Child of Our Time on BBC (Foxtel) and one of the (now 9 year old) little girls (of 25 kids being followed) was the only survivor of tiny triplets born at 24 weeks. She was the tiniest of the three and they never expected her to survive, especially not without problems. By 3 years of age she had completely caught up with all of her peers and was advancing ahead of them in many areas. She needs glasses, but is one of the brightest kids on the show and always the happiest. There are always stories that inspire hope.
I have been there. My DS was diagnosed at 20 weeks with complex heart conditions. 24 Weeks preterm labor started. Irritable uterus so home on bed rest. 30 weeks brought reversal of flow along umbilical cord and small baby (IUGR). Delivered at 36 weeks (after 12 weeks of contractions!) via non-labor c-section as he was stressed with my contractions and loosing wt. Birth wt 1.6kg (3pd 10oz). Too small for surgery so 5 weeks in NICU before airlifted to Melb.
After many open heart surgeries and issues he is now 4.5 years old and while he still has issues he is a joy.
Please PM me if you want to chat more. Anything I can do to help re chats etc would be my pleasure.
I think the main thing I did to help with the (considerable and very understandable) stress during the pregnancy was focus on what I could do for my baby. That meant relaxation techniques, celebrating each day of pregnancy as a great day for my baby, talking with our babies cardiologist, touring the NICU and getting to know the head of NICU, getting in touch with HeartKids, teaching myself how to knit and crochet and doing baby blankets for my son etc etc.
We also found out the sex through an amnio and so named our boy and started the personalized bonding from there.
Please, Please dont google. Really narrow your searches. What hospt will your baby girl have here surgery? Search their website not random ones. We had to go interstate for our surgery (SA to Vic) and so tried to also get into on where the hospt was, accommodation, shops etc.
Please contact me if you want to chat more or pick my brains.
Had another ultrasound this morning, not much to report because I don't see the specialist til tomorrow and the ultrasound technician was reluctant to tell me much. But at least I got another good look at bub and we have made it to 25 weeks and counting. Tomorrow I have been told to allow 3 hours for the appointment with the specialist, so I will know more then.
I vividly remember our 3 hour ultrasound and then the 1.5 hour consult after, some is a blur.
I thought you might be thinking about how to deal with tomorrow so here are the things that helped me:
My DH. He was great. He took notes and asked the cardiologist to spell or say again any of the abnormalities again that he didnt understand - and there were four major ones detected at 20 weeks.
I also had the cardiologist draw a picture of our sons heart and compare that with a "normal" heart. I am more of a visual person so that helped for me.
Also we got the name of the cardiac nurse who liaises with patients and we saw her (and our cardiologist) a few times before the birth just to go over a couple of things again.
We had follow up scan at 30 weeks to confirm the diagnosis and lots of other scans due to his size.
The notes my DH took really helped me as I didnt hear much after the prognosis. It was all a bit of a blur from that point on for me, my DH was able to keep going with the conversation though.
You are in my thoughts and prayers, as is your precious little girl.
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