Update!

On Monday, Jared and I met with a team of doctors, including the head NICU doctor. We got a much clearer picture of what Emily's first days and weeks will look like.

In the past few weeks, more has come to light about baby girl's heart. We have found out that she will need an initial surgery between 2-4 weeks old. Her lower left ventricle is measuring smaller than her right; this means even more blood will be pumped to her lungs, causing a lot of stress on her lungs and heart. To help slow the flow down, they will be putting a clamp around her pulmonary valve.

We will be in the NICU for at least one week and possibly up to a month. It all depends on how Emily is doing and the timing of her first surgery. At the appointment, we discussed the medications she will be on, what breastfeeding will look like, and the hurdles she will have while nursing and gaining weight because she will be so tired from her heart working extra hard. As Dr. George put it, until her open heart surgery later this year, we will be in a state of "managing heart failure."

Now the open heart surgery is estimated to occur between 4-6 months old. Since my last blog post, we learned that the official term for her heart defect is double-outlet right ventricle with a VSD (subarterial ventricular septal defect).

Because of the NICU's strict visitor policies (see below), Oliver can visit once, but that will be it. This was hard to hear, but I totally understand why, and I am glad that they are protecting those fragile NICU babes from getting sick.

To be honest, the hardest part of the meeting for me was hearing that after she's born, she can stay with me for about 10-15 minutes but then she will be taken right to the NICU so they can run lots of scans and tests and keep her under close watch. I was happy to hear that Jared can go with her, but on the other hand, I know being separated from her for her first few hours will be really hard for me.

I was amazed at the NICU team and especially Dr. George. While we were touring the NICU, he greeted every single parent by name and knew their baby's name. He only asked for our names once and continually talked about Emily; he knew every detail of her case already and was very thorough in explaining what we should expect both about her stay and about her heart. To say that we will be in good hands is an absolute understatement.

Please pray for... 
-Baby Emily to flip! She is still breech; I was 34 weeks on Monday. Selfishly, I don't want to be dealing with recovering from a C-section during all of this. I'm seeing a chiropractor now who is performing a non-invasive technique that helps breech babies turn. I actually did this with Oliver, too, and he flipped at 36 weeks. Because of my weird uterus, I'm not a candidate for performing a version or any other technique that pushes the baby around, so please pray the chiropractor helps!
-On the other hand, pray for baby to cook for as LONG as possible. I'm a likely candidate for having babies early (Oliver was 2 weeks early). But, if being breech means she stays in there longer to bake, I will happily take it!
-Pray for our family as we gear up for all of this. We have been flying around finishing projects, doing taxes, buttoning up sub plans, work leave, making freezer meals, and so on. Pray for unity, teamwork, and sweet moments of togetherness before we enter into this season.

Lastly, a note about visiting us in the NICU: 
The hospital will still be under strict visitor's rules because of this nasty flu season. Here are their guidelines for visitors to protect all of the very vulnerable NICU babies:
-You must have gotten the flu shot this year to visit.
-You must be healthy when visiting.
-If you've been around someone who has been sick in the past couple of days, they ask you to refrain from visiting, even if you are not showing any symptoms.
-No children under 5 are allowed to visit.