...and the walls come back up!!

I should really hold off on posting this until my emotions decide to come back to their reasonable state!!! We just returned from our 23 week appointment. The positives: The baby is darling. Today we got to see him swallow over and over and stick his tongue out....it looked as though he was trying to communicate with us. This was a lot of fun to see. He is a great size. He is measuring about 5 days bigger than his due date and they estimate he is about 1 pound 5 ounces. Today our wonderful doctor had an intern with him and so he was walking her through the ultrasounds and so it was fun to have an even more thorough ultrasound...I had to laugh though because he said to her...."Becky is an expert at ultrasounds and can read them faster than I can....." What can I say....I missed my calling in life...OR....I have had to many ultrasounds in my life!! The baby is very active and so far everything about him looks wonderfully amazing and I love him more than I can describe.

The negative:.....duh, duh, dunnnnnn! Today was the day I have been dreading since I found out I was pregnant. I think I was prepared to have these emotions 5 weeks ago and then we had such positive results that I have been riding this high for the past 5 weeks. I look at this as a positive too. I promised Heavenly Father that I would go through all of this again if we could just get him to the point where he could be transfused.....it looks as though he held up on his part of the bargain! The past few ultrasounds were territory we have never crossed before. We have never had a baby go down away from transfusion level....it was a high I have been enjoying more than I can explain. TODAY, the baby's level jumped up. While this will make no sense to most humans, his score started at a 28 on his 18 week appointment. This put us in the B range. From there he has gone down and our last ultrasound he was a 24/25 ish. This put him in the D range. We have never been in D range with any of our babies. Think of the chart as a growth chart. The A-D range isn't a straight line across...it curves up along the chart. Today the baby had readings between 30-32 putting him back up into the middle of C. While this is good he is still in C....it does mean that he jumped 5-8 points in two weeks....that is a lot and I can't help feel a little defeated today. Tomorrow I can start being optimistic again,...BUT today those emotions that never came 5 weeks ago are here and I am afraid the pessimist in me is winning out. Whew. I am scared. I can't deny it. I have been here...I know what comes next....BUT I have also witnessed miracles and I have complete faith in my Father in Heaven.

Soooo....here we are., and again, I write most of this down for me to remember. I understand it is quite confusing to most. Trust me...I wish I wasn't quite an expert in this area, BUT I am, and I am grateful that there is a way for my baby's to receive the help they need. What a gift.

Please keep the little guy in your prayers!!! Mwah!!! Love you all!!

Amazing Miracles

I just wanted to hurry and document the last couple of weeks. Facebook ruins it for me because I can just hurry and post the news within a couple of seconds....blogging actually takes a little more time. The past few weeks have been a dream. I have finally stopped throwing up.....YEAH! This is the fun part, when you feel for the most part....wonderful! I love feeling him move and feeling like I am not going to barf in everyones faces......that is a small miracle in and of itself. This kid is definitely a mover and a kicker. I swear to you he thinks my insides are a bounce house.....I often wonder how when he is so little he can be up the top of my stomach one second and then the next second he is at the bottom feeling like he is trying to make his way out. At our appointment yesterday our nurse was dying because he seriously was doing somersaults.......I wasn't kidding when I said he was a mover! BUT.....I love it because I feel like doing flips too with all of this wonderful news. At our last weeks appointment Greg and I were driving to the hospital daydreaming what it would be like if at this appointment he actually went down to level C. We have never had a baby go down on his head dopplers so while this was a nice thought we knew that we were way up in the night with our wish. We took the boys with us this time so that they could see their brother....we opted to leave them home when we were finding out what we were having because we didn't want them to be there for horrible news and especially if the baby had died...so this was their first time coming with us....besides our appointments are long and I can't imagine their patience will hold up but they loved being there and of course our little guy wouldn't show us his face for his 3D pictures...he is a Johnson and wanted to show us the goods.....and the boys thought it was hilarious!! When we got to the brain scan I found myself just holding my breath. While I was so excited the week before with his B level, I started feeling overwhelmed once we got home and started really thinking about what the road was going to be like ahead if he was like Colton. So many miracles had to take place for him to survive and I realized how emotional the next little while was going to be if we followed the same pattern. To my amazement the first scan/doppler showed that he had dropped from a 28 to a 26...what? That must be a mistake....but lucky for us they do at least 6 dopplers just to make sure they are getting an accurate reading. Everytime....26!!!!! I think we were in shock. This made him drop from a B level to almost the bottom of C level!! We had never experienced this. We were beside ourselves with shock and amazement...could this really happen???? This is what we hoped about and dreamed about. I slowly felt a little piece of my wall come down...I say a little piece because while I was excited I was still apprehensive that it was accurate.....my heart was jumping for joy but my brain couldn't wrap itself around this idea. Over the next week I still found myself not really enjoying the moment because my fear was that we'd go to the next appointment and find that we were wrong. Well, yesterday was our appointment and to our amazement he dropped to a 25 this time and we found ourselves in the D Level...WHAT???? We have NEVER had a baby in the D level. Again, I am so amazed and astonished....my wall is about halfway down....I am still in fear until we continue on this trend. We sat and talked with our doctor for a long time as we discussed the possibility that this baby might not carry the antigens. We knew there was a chance but I was too scared to believe it could truly happen. Our doctor told us that he could still end up needing transfusions but that maybe he was just carrying one of the antigens and so it will take a little longer for him to become anemic..whatever the outcome I know without a doubt that this is buying us some much needed time. I feel so thankful for this experience. I don't know the outcome but I feel so blessed and loved for all the prayers and fasting on our little boys behalf. What a miracle!! I just pray we can continue on this great trend and that we can find ourselves at the end of this journey amazed by the outcome!!