27 Week Scan - St George's

Okay so we finally have a bit of extra hope .............. YEY!!!!

We met with a different consultant today who was utterly brilliant!!! He was so gentle and explained absolutely everything to as as he went along. He, as always had a good look at James and saw a (and I quote) a 'beautiful' profile. We also had a giggle as it seems James is well DEFFINATELY a boy!!! Mum even asked for it to be measured ;-)

The best news of the day of the day was that we saw one good lung. This is brilliant as we had not seen this on the previous scans. The consultant had seen lots of CDH cases and said that there were some good prognostic features. Feeling perhaps a little over confident we asked for him to work out James's LHR.He told us he would let us know in a few hours.

My fluid levels are also back to normal - brilliant news!!! It seems James is a very clever little boy and can swallow beautifully.

James's stomach and small bowel appear to be in his chest. This is how we want it to stay. The liver needs to stay down where it is!

Perhaps our optimism was a little too over the top. The consultant needed to bring us in a little. He reminded us that CDH babies are extremely fragile from birth. James will be in Intensive care for a while which is a total roller coaster for the parents. These babies have good days and bad days and we need to be prepared for both. The average time in NICU and Special care is 8 weeks so we need to be prepared for a difficult time post birth.

He also reminded us that they have no way of predicting the outcome for CDH babies. His explanation he gave us was brilliant so I thought I'd pass it on. The lungs job is to take in oxygen and send it around the blood. They then take the carbon dioxide out of the blood and breath it out. If the lungs of a CDH baby are developed enough they will be able to do this job and the baby will go for surgery as quickly as possible, this is the best case scenario. However if the lungs can only do a small amount of this the baby is more likely to struggle and will have a tougher journey to become stable enough for the operation, however he still has a chance of survival If the lungs cannot do this at all there is no hope of survival and the baby won't survive. This is why we need to pray that the good lung can do its job well so that James is strong enough to undergo the surgery.

Even with this news we remain to be more optimistic than before. We thank you for your prayers, I'm sure God is working his plan on our little boy.

Thank you also to Mum, Dad and Mike. Your presence at these scary hospital appointments is invaluable. xxxx