Half Term

Well, the long awaited break has been and is nearly gone, it has been great. We have been very busy, I feel that I have made up for January of which I spent most of it in bed with flu and other viruses. We have been to North Wales, Eureka and Chester Zoo! Now we are back to our zoos on Monday! Enjoy the pictures.

Tuesday has come and gone

.... and we have more information. We hoped that this scans at St Mary's would confirm what the sonographers thought last Thursday. That Baby's palette is intact, as is his nose.

Sadly, that is not the case. He has a unilateral (one gap) cleft lip and palette. It is average in size and it does goes the full way up to his nostril and his nose is affected. His palette is damaged so feeding will be that little more complicated but the consultant is confident that all can be fixed with a minimum of two surgeries.

We are disappointed that it is as severe as it is, we had hoped that it would be only his lip, but now we really do have to consider speech difficulties, eating challenges and other hurdles too.

We are also very, very aware of the kindness of others, the pain and sadness that this brings. On the other hand we so many are excited to meet him and give cuddles. So form a queue... and be patient as June feels very far away.

Something to make you smile.

I picked Emily up form our childminder after our hospital appointment.
JA: we saw the baby dr today
E: Did he make my brother better?
JA: No, but when he is born.
E: What did he say?
JA: Well, your brother has a hole in his lip, but he also has a hole in his nose and mouth.
E: Mummy, there are holes everywhere! He is a holey baby!
JA: (Laughing) yes he really is!
E: But mummy, my baby brother is holey and Joel is holey, why am I not holey?
JA: I don't know Emily, we are glad you are not holey!

We are smiling, although we are hurting; we are laughing although we are weeping; we are praying and know that God is supporting us through people, friends and family and in silence too.

Round two

Well, the facial scans...

Where do I start? I suppose by saying that Jamie and I are hurting. Our little wriggly one, our much longed for and awaited one, our son... is going to be more unique than we thought. We eventually, after much walking up stairs, drinking sugary juice, jumping up and down... saw his face. He was still coy and at times pressed against my placenta but we have conclusive evidence that he has a cleft in his lip. A gap where both halves of his face have not fused together. We do not know how large, or how deep, we do not know if it affects his nose or palette.

We need more evidence so it is back to the children's hospital for round two of high level specialist scans.

What we do know is that we have been entrusted to look after this little boy..that he arrives into a world were vanity and the seeking of perfection is important. But he also arrives into a world where he is loved and celebrated. Where his choices are like any other; they just come after a bumpy journey for the first year or so.

We are anxious, we await these tests and hope that he cooperates and does not have his hands over his face. We go to Leeds for 4D scans at Easter to have high resolution images to see if that can guide his consultant prior to his birth. If not... we just wait for him to arrive in June, and then he will show us his face and we can work out what we and you and the NHS can do to help him.

We don't pretend that this is easy to handle. We already have Joel, his heart is still repairing, he is not at the end of his journey. Emily is an outgoing, busy 4 year old and into the mix we welcome a boy who needs a lot of immediate care. We would not have chosen this, but we have been chosen to be his parents and we look forward to meeting him.

So... we wait and pray. We pray for peace of mind. Peace of heart and soul. We pray for sleep in the long and sometimes short night. We pray for those who make decisions on our behalf, on our son's behalf. We pray for the staff who will care for him and help him. We pray for our families and friends as they hurt with us, journey with us, laugh and weep alongside us. We pray for Emily and Joel as we try to prepare them for a new brother. We pray that this little one will enter the world knowing that God made him and gave him to us to care for him.

We are grateful for all who have sent messages or called or just smiled. Hopefully we will have more information on Tuesday.

Phew!

This week we had high level, specialist cardio scan on baby. We knew that there was a 25% chance that this one would be like Joel or more complicated but when it is a statistic is feels far away. When it involves the little one so longed for, so wriggly in my stomach.. well it feels different.
We have had good care throughout this pregnancy with tests etc and this week was no different. Our 20 week anomaly scan took an hour... a very long hour! But all seems well apart from the fact that the baby was too shy to show his/her face so we are back for facial scans on Thursday.
Back to the cardio scan... we had to wait for ages as the families before us were complicated like us! But.......... after much looking, measuring, photographing, hmming and haaaaaing... baby does not have any holes similar to Joel. There may be small holes like any other baby but they will get sorted like any other baby at birth. What a relief! We are thankful and grateful.

Other news:

Joel is no longer in a cot, but a big boy bed complete with a gate on his door to keep him in.
Emily is now learning to swim on her back complete with arms... something I wish I was confident with.
It is only 2 weeks until half term!