Transitional AV canal defect

I figure since it's getting to be towards the end of my pregnancy, I should probably write about my son's heart defect. I've been wanting to post about it for a long time, but just couldn't find the time to sit down and write, and truthfully it's not the happiest thing to think about so that's a big reason why I've been putting it off. He has a transitional atrioventricular canal defect. We found out at his 19 week ultrasound. It was a weird day, we were so excited to see our baby and to find out the gender and didn't anticipate anything else. They saw that he was a boy pretty much off the bat, and checked out some of his other parts, everything seemed to be okay - until they looked at his heart - the sonographer seemed to spend a very long time looking at it - then said that she was going to call one of the doctors and came back a couple of minutes later and told us that the baby has a heart defect and asked if we could drive to their other office that was in Chandler right away so the doctor over there could do an ultrasound and let us know what was going on. Even though it was just a few miles away, it seemed like such a long drive, I was in shock and my mind was racing the whole time. What was going on with my baby? We got to the other office and the doctor looked and told us it was either an AV canal defect or an atrial septal defect, but the baby wasn't in the best position so she couldn't tell which one it was for sure. She then referred me to a pediatric cardiologist who could look and let us know - but that appointment wouldn't be for 2 more weeks. When we went to the appointment at the pediatric cardiologist's office we learned our son had a transitional atrioventricular canal defect.

With my son's heart defect, he has a large hole in the lower part of his atrial septum, a very small hole in the upper part of his ventricular septum (which the dr. thinks may have closed up recently), and a very mild mitral valve leak. The holes in the septum of the heart allow the oxygen-rich blood and oxygen-poor blood in his heart to mix and more blood flows into the lungs than usually would - the heart has to work harder and becomes enlarged. If left untreated it causes congestive heart failure. The type of AV canal defect my son has is a rare subtype and the doctor says he probably wont need open heart surgery until he is around 2 years old. I'm hoping and praying that he is able to be as healthy as possible, and that the surgery will go extremely well when the time comes.

I can't believe my Riah girl is old enough to be a Sunbeam! *tear*

Snow!

This last Saturday we went to play in the snow with my family. It was fun, and much needed! It has been a crazy week.

:)

Marriage advice #33: It's not nice to throw snowballs at your wife.

Making snow angels with Grandma

Sariah's cute little snowman

Woohoo!

Christmas pics

Sitting with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Wise girl!

It's a tradition in my family to do a Christmas Eve nativity with all the kids.

Christmas morning!

Riah and her cousins at Grandma & Grandpa's ranch on Christmas

Feeding the horses.

My cuties :)

She calls Curt's grandpa "Poppin' Jones"
Merry Christmas 2009!

Bun in the oven

I am 15 weeks pregnant. I have felt really good this time around, no morning sickness. I was having major food aversions to many of the foods I used to love, but they are starting to sound decent again. I've been craving healthy foods - lots of fruit and veggies, but also craving many of the foods I can't eat anymore - it's the first time in the year since I've been diagnosed with celiac disease that I have been very tempted to eat things that aren't gluten-free. I want pizza like nothing else, sandwiches with real bread, and strawberry cheesecake with graham cracker crust. I think I just need to find a good alternative to the cheesecake crust, and then I'll be okay. A big thing with gluten-free cooking is you need to try a few different recipes before you find something that is edible, so much just doesn't taste quite right.

I'm still very surprised to be pregnant, very very surprised.

I haven't really been spreading the news about my pregnancy too far, I think my experience with the miscarriage a few months ago scared me from shouting it from the rooftops. 12 weeks came, and I was gonna write something, but I still felt scared to announce it for some reason. I'm getting a pretty good-sized baby bump, and I figure I should say something before my belly says it for me.

We did have a scare, around 6 weeks. My hCG levels weren't rising as they should've been and my doctor called me and told me that she wanted to do an ultrasound to see what was happening. This was almost exactly what happened last time. I was expecting to go to the ultrasound and see nothing, no heartbeat. When the ultrasound tech started the ultrasound and told me that my baby was just fine and had a nice strong heartbeat, it was amazing. What a blessing.

They did another ultrasound at 12.5 weeks, just to make sure everything was going along smoothly. Baby had a heartbeat of 162, and was jumping around in my uterus (just like Riah!). We were able to see the gender of the baby, the ultrasound tech said she was 80% sure it's a boy. :)



Sariah is so excited to be a big sister, she keeps telling me she wants to share her toys with the baby and give him crackers. She's gonna be a great big sis.

Sariah loves to draw pictures, she drew this picture of me and her for Curt while I was at school.

Sariah got the cute dollhouse you see on the left of this pic from Grandma Goodman for Christmas. It's one of her favorite toys. Earlier today she found an alternate use for it: She took the pillows off the couch and put them next to the couch, and took the little doll house family and reached over the side of the couch and bounced them off the pillows one at a time so that they would ricochet and hit the dollhouse. Then she would laugh, every time!

Niiiice.

Family Home Evening

:)

Monkeys

Today was a wonderful day. It was much needed, the last month or so has been really rough.


I finished block 1 today, and am on break for about a month until block 2 starts!

To celebrate, Curt and I went to see 'Up', it was so good! We went to the 3D showing, and got a couple of pairs of old man-esque 3D glasses, which I thought looked adorable on Curt.

Then we went ice skating, but we made it just in time for the tail-end of the late afternoon session, so they let us skate for half an hour for free. Pretty awesome!

Yay for action shots, and Curt ice skating in shorts!


After that, we picked Riah up and went to go feed the ducks.
My monkeys!

Drinkable ketchup

That is all.