We don't know yet.

So, Matt and I went to the specialist today. We knew that this would just be a consultation, but we did get a little more than we thought. Initially we parked in the wrong building, so we got a nice little tour of the St. John's medical buildings. When we did eventually find the place we were looking for, I was surprised by how huge it was. The Perinatal Clinic takes up the entire 8th floor of one of these medical buildings. I walked through the doors into a beautiful wonderfully decorated and perfectly lit waiting room. I checked in at the counter and filled out twenty minutes worth of paper work. Then we were escorted back to the room where we would be meeting the doctor. It was an ultrasound room surprisingly. I did not expect this and was pleasantly surprised to learn that we would get to see the baby again. We saw him/her at our first visit with Dr. Cox, but this was before we knew that there was a potential problem. So, baby pops up on the screen and all is well. Perfect heart rate and it even moved around a bit. Actually s/he moved a lot! I have to admit that this made me feel much better. Then Dr. Blake came in and the interrogation began. Not really, but there were a lot of questions being fired back and forth. Dr. Blake is a woman who may not immediately appear as a specialist in maternal-fetal hematology, and this helped me too. She is a shortish woman in her forties with a really comforting voice and a straight forward demeanor. So, here is what I know so far. Until 16 weeks of gestation, the baby is separated from any potentially harmful antibodies. This means that the baby is developing well right now, without any interruption from these tricky antibodies. The sixteen week point is sort of the turning point for all of this. At that point, I'll have another, more intense ultrasound to determine some factors. Basically they look at an artery in the baby's brain to determine the speed of the blood that is travelling through it. That will give us a level (I didn't really understand, but I think it's the level of the antibody in the baby's blood) to watch. If it's really low, we'll see her three weeks later for another. If it's higher, we'll see her a week later- and this is where the possible problems arise. Ok, more on that later- I've got to eat before I kill someone. MMMM Camille's... Keep praying for that low level at the next ultrasound!
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