We arrived home to our local airport around 6:30pm. I may or may not have shed a few tears and we arrived. It felt like the end of a long journey! It was a delayed and somewhat bumpy flight home due to the bad weather surrounding TN. We were so thankful to get home. It is definitely a new experience for me to be in a wheelchair...somewhat humbling I guess. The girls did great and I think they were as happy to be home as we were. In fact, Ella said about 4 times, "Mommy, it's so good to be at my house." I couldn't agree with her more.
Our ultrasound today went really well. Eli's fluid is still in the normal range and his ventricles are still measuring normally as well. I think the best thing that we saw today was fluid or a space back behind the cerebellum. One aspect of spina bifida is that it causes the cerebellum to be pulled down into the spinal column where it should not be. It is called hindbrain herniation or Chari malformation. Eli did have this visible on ultrasound prior to our fetal surgery. One of the benefits of fetal surgery is that they often saw that over the remaining part of the pregnancy the cerebellum was able to move back to where it should be. This was one of the motivating factors in us doing the surgery. So today when they did our ultrasound we could already see this happening after one week!!! I think everyone in the room was excited to see this already!!! It helped to make all the pain and inconveniences worth it to already see some physical benefit for Eli. Please keep praying that God will continue to heal our little Eli as he grows.
Today they asked me if I thought the experience had been harder, easier or what I had expected. I guess that is a hard question to answer because there were times when it was way harder!! There were also moments when it was easier. I did say that all along we felt so blessed by each person we came in contact with. I cannot say enough good things about my doctors at Vanderbilt. I just wish they were local! They will continue to follow us on a weekly basis, so I look forward to staying in touch with them in the weeks to come.
So, the weeks to come are ones that will be low-key and doing everything I can to let our sweet little boy grow as long as he can. This includes lifting nothing heavier than a gallon of milk. I know as the weeks go by and I feel better and better this will be hard for me. It is so natural to just "do" what needs to be done. I know in the grand scheme of life this will be a very short period and so we will do all we can do to get Eli here as late as possible. I would love to make it to 37 weeks. 34 weeks is considered about normal for this pregnancy. Please pray that fluids will stay high and contractions will stay away. Here's to the next 13 weeks (hopefully) of cooking!!
2 comments:
So glad to hear you are home and are already seeing some benefits from the surgery! Praying for 37 weeks with you!
I found your blog through your prayer request on Kelly's blog and came here to read and pray for you. My 7 year old son has Chiari Malformation and had decompression surgery in 2008. He has has a tethered spinal cord which was released last June. We had no idea until he was 4 years old that there were any issues. Praying for you and your son during the rest of your pregnancy.
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