One Day At A Time

I'm feeling a little bit lost right now, after the whole whirlwind of a week driving every day to Winnipeg and not hearing too much change, but mostly getting decently positive remarks about the baby's condition.
Today was a totally different day, and of course it was the first day I'd gone by myself. They've decided that the diagnosis is probably wrong, and they're really lost as to what the problem may be as of right now. Dr. Schneider, who has been on my case since Monday, but I hadn't seen the past two days, did an ultrasound today and was not too happy with what she saw.
She said the baby appears to be in worse condition today than on Monday, and that is part of why she has decided to scrap the original diagnoses, because if it was simply a case of tachycardia, and it had resolved like it appears it has(which is also much quicker than they expect to see if it really was PSVT) then the baby should be improving in condition, the heart should be becoming more efficient and that is just not the case. She also mentioned that the degree of fluid build-up is incongruous with the severity of heart rate disturbances that they saw. Basically she said in order to see that much edema they would expect that the baby would have been experiencing very high heart rates for a high percentage of the time, which did not appear to be the case, and in fact the fluid has increased since Monday, instead of decreasing as they had hoped.
She also noticed a few things on the ultrasound today that are somewhat troubling and definitely not improvements to the baby's condition. First off, she noted little movement today, however I find this a hard thing to really be sure of, as I don't see how they can tell if they've just caught the baby during one of his resting/sleep periods instead of an active period. He is laying the opposite way today that he was yesterday (head to the left today instead of to the right like yesterday) and I know I've felt him moving, however not as much as I'd like. Secondly, she noted (as the pediatric cardiologist had also noted yesterday) that the walls of the heart "brighter" than they should be, which can be an indication of problems. There was also quite a bit of variation in the liver, it had many spots that were hyper-echoic (meaning they showed up more than they should, or that they reflected back more sound waves than the surrounding tissue, meaning they're of a different density) which was troubling to her.
Dr. Schneider said that if she had to go strictly from the ultrasound, she would predict that it was an infectious case of some sort (some sort of virus likely affecting the fetus), but so far, everything they've tested for has been negative. They are still waiting on one test result from some screening they did using a blood sample from me on Monday. In an attempt to look for more answers, they did an amniocentesis(took a sample of the amniotic fluid by putting a needle through my abdomen - the whole process reminded me of doing a tail block on a cow, from the swabbing with iodine based disinfectant to the 6" long needle). It will be a couple of WEEKS before we get full results from that though. I won't lie, it was not at ALL a comfortable procedure and by this point I was wishing I hadn't come alone, but I am very thankful for the caring and compassionate nurses and doctor that I get to deal with. Unfortunately, my regular nurse was off this afternoon, so I had someone I'd never dealt with before, but the quality and genuine-ness of care was still very much present. At this point there are MANY more questions than answers, and we won't even begin to know any of those answers (if ever) until Tuesday. The doctor did tell me to just take the weekend to relax and I was relieved to hear that I can stay home for a few days, however, she didn't hide the fact that there may be no heartbeat on the next ultrasound.

There's lots to deal with today...its been a very emotional day, I felt emotional even before I went to the city, so it wasn't exactly a great day to hear the news I heard, but I'm trying not to think too far ahead (although that is getting harder now) and just take each day as it comes. There is a chance that this all may "spontaneously resolve" as they put it - or that he may be healed as I would choose to see it (best case scenario) or he could be faced with a lifetime of challenges (there is the possibility of Downs syndrome or other chromosomal defects)if he gets to live in this world, or he may meet my Lord before we get to meet him. I'm not sure how to react, but I know that is the only part of this equation that I have any control over, so I'm trying to take it one step at a time as HE provides the light for the path, I know HE knows my paths(and my baby's) far ahead of me, even when I can't seem to see where my next step should be.

Thank you to all who have been upholding us in prayer and for the tangible support offered by those who are able.
Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers, we need all the strength we can get.

PS- for those who are wondering, the "he" is deliberate, we decided to find out the gender, since we have a need to discuss specifics about him much more than usual and it just seems kind of strange to say "it" over and over.