Update on Isaac and Eli

Here is part of the email that C sent to us last night after their doctor visits!!

Here is what we learned today: We had two appointments, the first was a fetal echocardiogram in which a doctor basically just looked very closely at Eli’s heart through ultrasound. (Isaac’s heart was looked at as well, and found to be just fine, as expected.) The cardiologist said that Eli’s heart looks good- it has all the parts it’s suppose to, and functions properly. The only problem is that just like any other muscle that gets a lot of work – it gets thicker. His heart is thickening because it is working so hard. He said that this is something that would probably cause Eli to be very sick after birth for a while, but would eventually work itself out back to normal, if he were to survive. (Just like any other muscle that you quit working out, eventually it gets smaller again…)







The two conditions that Eli has are IUGR (Intrauterine Growth Restriction) and AEDF (Absent End Diastolic Flow). The IUGR (small size) is because of the AEDF (resistance of blood flow to placenta). They told us that the AEDF was still present but hasn’t gotten worse. The doctor’s seemed to be encouraged by this.




Eli’s weight, however, is still not where it needs to be for him to have much of a chance of survival if he were born now. The doctor did not feel delivering now was a good option, just because both babies would be at such risk for not surviving (mainly Eli), and both at risk for possibly having severe long term complications. Eli has grown in the past two weeks but he remains in the 4% for his gestational age. His weight today was 436 grams- 500 grams is still sort of a goal- but even that weight is still putting him at a pretty large risk. At the rate he has been growing he probably won’t be at 500 grams for another 2 weeks.

 So the plan for now from here is that they are going to monitor B and the babies once a week. We have another appointment Monday, February 1st, so that the doctors can check the status of the AEDF and Eli’s weight. We don’t expect him to be at 500 grams by Monday, so this appointment will probably be strictly monitoring. We will go again a week after that and check weight and status of the AEDF again. Once Eli gets to 500 grams, we could possibly choose to take both boys from the womb then, but as long as the AEDF isn’t worsening, and Eli’s heart isn’t dangerously thickening and he isn’t collecting fluid on his heart or other areas of his body (which is a concern), the doctors want to try to keep them in the womb as long as possible. There is still the chance that Eli’s heart could stop working at any point through all of this.

Thank you ladies for your thoughts and prayers.  They are still needed of course, but as of now things are ok!  Have a great day!!