Skip to main content

30 Weeks

Riley has reached the thirty week mark which means we only have nine-ish weeks left to go until we get to see her in the flesh. We were told by the doctors at the Mater Hospital that they normally let a baby with Riley's condition go up to 39-40 weeks to make sure she has grown as much as she can. But if she hasn't been born yet in the 39th week they will induce her. I remember when we first heard that we were pregnant I read about 3 books on pregnancy within a couple of weeks; however since we heard about her condition I haven't read anything about what to do when you actually have the baby. Feel like that may be something I should get onto before she makes her arrival but on the flip side we will have a bunch of nurses and specialists taking care of her in the first few months of life. So maybe I shouldn't be too concerned.

We had yet another growth scan yesterday as well as a doctors appointment today; we felt it might have been unnecessary since we had one only two weeks ago but we also tend to see it as a positive. Normally after the twenty week scan you don't get to see your baby again until birth, we are blessed that we get to check in on her and see how she is growing every couple of weeks. And let me just say she is GROWING! She is already up to almost 1.7kg. At these growth scans they are always on the lookout to see if she is growing at the right rate; so it is a relief to know that there is nothing to worry about (besides the obvious). This time she decided to pose for us so we ended up getting this shot...

Also we have been blown away by the support of people from all over. All the prayers and encouragement we've received is incredible; sometimes from people who don't even know us but heard about our circumstances then decided to reach out to us. We have built relationships with people in similar situations to us as well; it's funny to think that before this we had heard hardly anything about Congenital Heart Defects and now it feels like everywhere we turn we see a news report, a Facebook post or hear of families going through this too. Maybe we just notice it more now. There are even people hard at work in Jess' workplace raising money to go towards her. One day when Riley is a little older I hope to show her all of this so she can know that she had so many people on her side fighting for her every step of the way. To everyone who has kept Riley on your heart, we thank you!

Comments

  1. Hi Sean, Jess & of course Riley Eve,
    I finally worked out how to comment... I think!?!?
    Thinking of you all & very happy we've reached the 30 week mark!!! Pregnancy & summer are usually tough Jess & add Mt. Isa heat & that's a whole new ball game!!! Rest up our girl!! Love Trish Casey

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moving to the Ward

Something wonderful happened over the last weekend; Riley became tremendously boring (not to us though). We had grown somewhat accustomed to our little girl being surprising and sometimes even confusing. One day she would be doing fantastic followed by a day filled with worrying stats. All of that changed and I can probably even tell you the moment I realized this. I was sitting by Riley's bedside like I normally do and glanced over at what Riley's nurse was doing as she intently typed away on her work computer. I wondered if she was updating Riley's stats or filling in paperwork for the nurse who would take over from her. Turns out it was none of the above; she was googling the lemon detox diet. Our nurse who was assigned to keep a careful watch over Riley had so little to do that she was entertaining herself. A pattern began to form with the following nurses as they all seemed to not have enough to keep them occupied. They began to offer to help out the nurses beside us w

Our Appointment in Brisbane

Jess at 24 weeks We have been waiting for this appointment. Finally we were going to go to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane to meet with a Paediatric Cardiologist! This was significant because we have been hoping to get a final answer on Riley's condition. In the interim we have spent even more time googling stories of people who had been to the Mater Hospital for similar conditions trying to prepare ourselves for the kind of life we could be in for over the next year. We were met by Dr Gooi (who I had been told looked like Jeff from the Wiggles) and began our scan, throughout the whole appointment we sat and watched Riley's special heart beating on the screen. Soon we were joined by a lady named Karen who is a Paediatric Cardiac Care Co-Ordinator; as the scan dragged on she kept our minds busy asking us questions about our lives and how we have been coping through the whole process. Dr Gooi finished and let us know that Riley definitely has Double Inlet Left Ventricle wi

Surprises

Some of you may know this and some of you may not but we have a very special little girl. We haven't met her yet, haven't even gotten a hold but we know that she is special. We got our first glimpse of her when she was only eight weeks old, at that time she looked more like a blob. Not human-like at all. But we knew she was was going to grow into someone beautiful. Our next glimpse was at twelve weeks then twenty week mark, we were looking forward to this scan because we had always planned to find out what gender our baby was. We didn't like (or more like probably I didn't like) having to wait and see, at least we could start preparing. What we were not prepared for was that the sonographer struggled to get a good look at the heart; she got Jess to take a walk, move all around, come back a few times until she got a very good look and I am thankful that she did. She let us know that she had concerns about what she was seeing and decided to let another sonographer