A Spoonful of Sugar...

Helps the medicine go down.

It certainly did today. Thank you so much for all of your prayers. Our appointment with the neonatologist went very well. Dr. Hall is a very kind, calm, trustworthy man. While the outlook hasn't changed, I feel as though he is very supportive of the choices we have made...and will take an honest and thorough look at our baby at delivery and then help guide us in the direction that we need to go. He emphasized several times throughout our meeting that although our son's life will be shorter than we'd ever want it to be, that doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful. He said that he and his staff will do everything they can to help make this as meaningful an experience as it can be for us...which we are truly grateful for.

He reassured us that our baby will look relatively normal...he said that babies that are in utero without fluid often appear to have been "shrink wrapped"...and while our little dude will probably stay curled up in the fetal position, as he has been in the womb, his face and limbs will not be scary to look at. His facial features will probably be a bit flattened, but this we can handle. This is a huge relief as some folks have told us that our baby will look very malformed.

He anticipates that, if things are as they appear to be on the sonograms, our son will live for no longer than a few hours. He did say that he will most likely be born alive. He also said that our baby will not experience any kind of pain while he is alive, and will just gradually stop breathing and go to heaven peacefully. Dr. Hall said that they will evaluate him when he is born, and if they determine that he, in fact, has no lung tissue, they will wrap him in a warm blanket and let us hold him and try to make the most of the short time he'll be with us on this earth. If they determine that there's enough lung tissue to make a "go" of it, he'll most likely be transported to Children's Mercy immediately. We haven't given up hope that maybe, God will grant us this miracle...but if not, we will make the most of the time we are given.

We are looking at late June for our delivery. This will put us around 32 weeks...long enough to be well past the point of viability, but early enough that hopefully some of our sanity will be left. Keep praying.

I hope this Doctor trains many medical students. His bedside manner (or chair-side manner in our case) is legendary. What a gift.

Tomorrow I may try to write and share a bit more of our story with you...I know that several of you are reading this and may not know how this all got started...and we want to invite you in to stay for awhile if you'd like. :)

Until then...