I should probably write a whole post; but for now, I’m just going to paste the update we’ve put on Savannah’s Facebook group:
God is good! We saw significant improvement in Savannah’s heart today!
The smaller chamber has grown significantly! The doctor said it is now comparable in size and looks much much better. The vessels we were concerned about also seem to have improved. We still don’t know for sure if they are all routed in to just the right part of the heart, but the doctor seemed much more hopeful that things could be correct. Either way, he feels confident that we can now aim for a 2 ventricle/4 chamber repair. The best news of all is that now everything should be able to be handled here at Riley instead of having to go to Boston. We are praising The Lord for that!
The cardiologist also said that he is now optimistic that she may not need ANY heart surgery directly after birth. If she does, it will be a much simpler non-open-heart procedure. We are also no longer looking at two major open heart surgeries for alternate circulation, but ONE surgery between 9-12 months that will be a REPAIR! This gives her a much much better long term outlook!
We had an extensive ultrasound at our appointments today, too. All Savannah’s organs and other body parts appear correct and she is still a very active baby! We will keep watching her intestines and spleen after she is born because they cant see those in ultrasound, but everything they could see looked good.
They did find one area of concern. Savannah is measuring small. This could be due to a lot of things, including her genetics (Mommy is not very big either!), the fact that she has a two-vessel cord (we knew this) that does not move as much blood as easily, her heart defect (heart babies are often small), or a problem in the placenta. The doctor said there is no way of knowing which thing or things it is, so they want to monitor her very closely for blood flow and growth. This means weekly ultrasounds to measure growth and blood flow through her cord. That way, if she has trouble or stops growing, they can look at delivering her early so they can help her to keep growing! They will keep her in as long as possible, but we don’t want to put her at any unnecessary risk if her body is not getting enough nutrition from her cord to keep on growing.
Thank you so much for all of your prayers. I am confident that those prayers are the reason we saw so much improvement today!
Please keep praying for her heart to keep improving. God is working in that tiny little heart and we are so thankful.
Please also pray very specifically for Savannah’s blood flow through her cord and her growth. The bigger she is when she is born, the better off we are for her heart condition. Please pray that the flow through her cord would increase and be sufficient. Pray also that her growth would stay on track and that she would be able to keep gaining weight. Prayer works and we saw plenty of evidence of this today!
Praising God tonight, and crying HAPPY tears!