Bad News Bears

Well, bad news at the doctor's office today. :( The velocity of the blood flow through the hole they created between Haley's atria is above 7 now which means that the hole is officially getting too small. It had been trending upwards and that's what I was so worried about after our last visit, and unfortunately my worrying was well founded. The hole has to be enlarged and Haley will be scheduled to go back into the catheter lab (at least) the end of this week or the beginning of next.

Dr. Wheller (her cardiologist) said he is also going to talk to Dr. Galantowicz (her cardiothoracic surgeon) about the possibility of doing the second stage of her Hypoplast repair at the same time so she could have one procedure instead of two. Typically the earliest they do the stage 2 is at 4 months of age, but he said she already weighs as much/is as big as the average heart baby is at 4 months. They have to weigh at least 5 kg to have the stage 2, and she is already 5.25 kg. But he also said he wouldn't want to guess whether Dr. Galantowicz would want to do that or not, so we will just have to wait and see. They are supposed to be calling us tomorrow to give us a date for surgery - whether it's just the balloonoplasty, which would get her through another couple months and then they'd do the stage 2, or if they just want to go straight to the stage 2. With the stage 2 she would be on cardiac bypass and it would be open heart anyway so they could easily just cut a more permanent hole between the two atria and be able to skip the whole catheterization process. However it is the biggest/riskiest of the 3 procedures for HLHS, having an ~5% fatality/badness rate instead of ~1% like the 1st and 3rd surgeries. Supposedly if she has just the catheterization she should only be in the hospital a few days to a week or so, whereas the stage 2 could easily be up to a few weeks long hospital stay again.

To be perfectly honest I'm not even sure which option I'm wishing for. I guess that's why it's their job to decide and not mine. I wish for option C - she's magically cured and we never have to go through any of this again. A selfish and scared part of me wants her to just have the catheterization because that seems a little safer and like there might be a chance we'd be home in time for Christmas. I would just love to have her home at Christmas so much, I've been looking forward to that since we found out we were pregnant in January. But I guess that truly and sincerely what I want is just to have my baby in my arms on Christmas day, and wherever we have to be is okay with me so long as I have her. And it would be wonderful if she could be through that second stage too at that point. Just having her is all I wish for for Christmas.

On a happier note - Haley officially chuckled for the first time today! There have been a couple times in the last few days when we thought she might have, but today she definitely did chuckle twice in a row! I was tapping her nose with her sock, telling her her socks go on her feet and not her face, when she grinned giant grins several times and chuckled twice! It was wonderful - music to my ears! She is just the cutest little monkey. And she was sooo good at her doctor's appointment today. She didn't fuss at all and was good for all the slew of things they do to her. She is such a good baby, I'm a lucky Mommy.