Week 30 Completed

Last night was our first appointment with Dr. Valdecasas, daughter of Dr. Valdecasas Sr., since we confirmed the baby's heart condition. The news was good under the circumstances: the baby still shows no signs of cardiac distress and has gained about 200 grams, which means he now weighs roughly 1.5 kg. This weight gain is fantastic because it is a sign that the baby is continuing to grow and mature, which was a worry, and is an added indicator that his heart is still coping well with the situation. Plus, every gram he gains gives us more options and better chances if he has to be delivered prematurely.

Personally, I was thrilled though not completely surprised by the news of the baby's weight gain, since I have a cadre of militant friends and family bent on force feeding me at every turn. Maria Jesus, my mother-in-law, has deployed her cleaner, Jenny, who now comes by every day to cook tempting organic meals for me. And Shanti and Kalan just got back from Paris armed with a sack full of buttery pains au chocolat, croissants and other French pastries which I am under strict orders to gobble down.

These last seven days have been a mixture of agony, effort, tears, support and faith. But we have gotten through them and are one week down. To survive, we have relied heavily on the stunning support system we have. I will share just one example: my friend Iris' due date was yesterday. Normally, this would mean that we, her friends, would all be on high alert, ready to act at the first sign of a contraction. Instead, it was I who called her, saying "Iris, I need you!" and she came. We spent the day together down by the beach, whiling away the time and wallowing around in the pool at the Hotel Arts, one of Barcelona's premier hotels. (Actually, we wallowed in our underwear, just daring someone to come up to two very pregnant women and tell them it was inappropriate in that heat.) It was blissful. The day came and went and, for those of you wondering, nothing momentous happened on Iris' side, much to her dismay.

Those further afield have also been wonderful, sending emails, flowers, calling and just generally checking in on us. So, thank you all.

[The next section of this post is for those of you with an insatiable appetite for the medical details. Not everyone loves the detail, but many of you have requested that I keep you up to date, so this next section is for you.]

During last night's visit, Dr. Valdecasas spent about 10 minutes measuring the baby's heart rate, the rate of the umbilical cord, the flow of blood in and around the brain and various other things. She also did her utmost to show us the baby on a 3D ultrasound, but the baby chose not to cooperate (a sign of things to come?). He was moving so much that the software couldn't bring him into focus. (Given my current state, I asked if too much fetal movement could actually be a bad thing, but apparently not.)

Dr. Valdecasas had also been doing some of her own research on this situation, given the rarity of it. She confirmed to us that there are very few cases written up in existing medical literature of babies born without the ductus venosus. There are no studies or conclusive statistics to rely on, because there are so few cases that the numbers are not statistically relevant. Of those cases that have been documented, she confirmed that the babies generally do tend to suffer slightly more the longer the pregnancy goes on, so we will watch this very closely.

The one thing the doctor did appear to pay great attention to was the size of the baby's heart. In the last week, the baby's heart has grown. This is fine but it seems that there is a limit to how much the baby's heart should grow, relative to his size. This could be another piece of information that might make the doctors act, depending on how things evolve.

All this rarity means that there is no real protocol around what to do, except to increase monitoring and go back to basics, which is what we are doing. Increased monitoring means that I will start to go to the clinic twice a week – once on Tuesdays to do what we did today, that is, check the baby on the ultrasound, check heart rates and blood flows and heart size. And once again on Thursdays, to do a more lengthy monitoring of the fetal heart rate, over say 40 minutes, to determine if there are any abnormal patterns that can be discerned. My first long monitoring is this Thursday. Even if we find some abnormal pattern, the doctors will not necessarily act on the information, since they still must balance that data with the fact of delivering a baby 10 weeks premature. But at least the doctors share my current philosophy, which is that increased information is a good thing.

All of this must sound like an awful lot of monitoring to those of you who simply got pregnant, had normal pregnancies and then delivered perfectly healthy babies. For me, it helps to know that we are doing everything we can and that no stone is being left unturned. Since my focus is on anxiety management, the increased monitoring helps wonderfully in that regard.

I have also been provided with an arsenal of other suggestions from various people for how to manage anxiety, including:

- eating ice cream (a universal anxiety depressant. I myself suggested this one.)

- watching TV series (I am a believer in the therapeutic qualities of the idiot box, because it is so effective at shutting one's brain off. When I was recovering from the liver surgery, my mother and I watched three straight seasons of Gray's Anatomy to deflect my attention from the pain of the recovery, and it worked.)

- trying meditation (about three different people have suggested this - maybe I should give it a shot. See next post.)

I will check in again to update you all in two days time. In the meantime, thank you all for your love and support. Demian and I could not do this without you.