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Hugs and kisses for Coco at 17 weeks.

The news from today’s sonogram could not be better.  We won’t keep you in suspense any longer: The cyst is gone.  Did you hear that?  THE CYST IS GONE!  Baby Coco is a healthy, cyst-free, fluid-free baby!  And oh, so cute:

The doctor said that if today was the first time he had seen us, he would say the baby looks great.  We’ll take an extra close look at the heart at 24 weeks, just because of the single-artery umbilical thing.  Before that, we’ll go in for our routine 20-week sonogram in three weeks.

We can hardly believe it.  After so much worrying and wondering, we get to finally let our excitement about having another baby take over once more.  I think “the cyst is gone” might be my four favorite words since becomming a mother.  Well, might be tied with “the fluid is gone” or, “I love you, Mommy.”

Here’s a profile of the baby’s head and arms.  One hand is up in front of the face, and the other is behind the head.  What’s funny is I was laying just like that during the sonogram.

Profile of the head and body.  Notice how the baby’s nose appears large and there is little evidence of a chin…. Who do YOU think the baby might look like?

An action shot of the baby waving.  Baby waved at us quite a few times.

Love those little baby feet!

Baby Kurth, or “Coco Cox-Arquette Kurth” (Coco for short), is now 15 weeks.

Did you feel that big gust of wind just now?  That was our sigh of relief.  The sonogram today revealed that the scary fluid in the baby’s tummy is gone.  Yes — GONE!  The baby’s heart is beating steady and strong and looks great.  The brain, spine, and kidneys all look good, too.  And Baby is still growing on track for the due date.

But we’re not quite out of the woods yet.  The fluid is gone, but now there is a mysterious cyst in Baby’s tummy.  The doctor really has no idea what this could be, but the list of possibilities this time was waaay less scary than last time.  Could be completely benign with no impact on the baby whatsoever, could be something correctable, could even go away on its own…. but worst-case, it could still be an indication of something serious like down syndrome.  But in any case, at least it sounds likely that our baby will survive!

The doctor was encouraged as well.  He said that if the fluid was a sign of something really bad, we would probably have seen that the fluid was still there and maybe even worse.  But we will be going back again in another two weeks to keep watch on the cyst and make sure the fluid doesn’t return.

So does this sound familiar at all?  Some of you might remember that Kaeta was born with fluid in her tummy.  By the time the doctors went to extract some of the fluid to run tests, the fluid had disappeared and was replaced by a benign cyst  — which over the next few months went away completely on its own.   So, yeah.  I guess we DO just make babies with weird inexplicable fluid that goes away.

Again, thank you all for all your prayers and words of encouragement.  We are so thankful for you, for this baby, and for this very hopeful answer to all our prayers.

We’re going out to eat to celebrate.  We’ll try to post sonogram pics later.

On a lighter note…. In the car today on the way to Joel’s house, Kaeta started singing Old McDonald quite exuberantly.  Apparently Old McDonald had some chickens, a dog, a dolphin….

Kaeta: With a squirt-squirt there, a squirt-squirt there, everywhere a squirt-squirt….

Mommy: A dolphin?? Old McDonald has a dolphin?

K: yes!

M: How exotic!

K: (continues singing)….e-i-e-i-o And on his farm he had a whale! e-i-e-i-o  With a swallow-swallow there, everywhere a swallow-swallow….Old MacDonald had a farm….

M: (misses the green light from laughing so hard)

K:….And on his farm he had a…shark! e-i-e-i-o With a punch-punch there and a punch-punch there, everywhere a punch-punch there….

Because everyone knows that whales go “swallow-swallow” and sharks go “punch-punch”.

This has been a long two weeks.  Our follow-up sonogram is tomorrow afternoon, and as the fateful hour approaches, we are occupying ourselves by counting our blessings.  Basically, the doctors have not been terribly hopeful, but we are trying to be.  So in no particular order, here are a few reasons we have to be encouraged:

1.  The baby is growing well and has a strong heartbeat.

2.  You may think it’s crazy, but at 15 weeks, I’ve already started to feel the baby move a little bit.  You’ll think I’m even crazier when I tell you I started feeling it at 14 weeks.  (It’s getting easier to tell it apart from gas.)

3.  When Kaeta was born, she had fluid in her abdomen.  She spent a week (the longest of our lives) in the NICU.  The doctors were quite concerned then too, and prepared to run several tests.  But when they went to perform the tests, the fluid was gone.  She’s been fine ever since.  So who knows?  Maybe we just make babies with weird inexplicable fluid in their tummies when nothing is actually wrong.

4.  There might actually be nothing wrong.  Even the doctors have admitted that this is a possibility.  No one has ruled out the chance that the baby will be born in January, healthy as can be.

5.  We know that God loves this baby even more than we do, and He has a plan for this life, no matter how long or brief it may be.  We might have been blind-sided by this, but He is not.

6.  We have lots of people who love this baby and are praying for us.  And we are so grateful.

Thank you for all your prayers and encouragement.  We can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.  Sigh.  This has been a loooong two weeks.  Stay tuned….

This is a hard post to write.

Baby Kurth might be in trouble, and we ask for your prayers.  Last week I had a sonogram to check on a “non-worrisome abnormality” that the doctor found during a routine sonogram at my regular visit.  They sent me to a place where they specialize in ultrasounds to get a closer look.  Apparently the abnormality is no longer “non-worrisome”.  Basically, the baby has some fluid backing up in his/her abdomen, which the doctors find alarming.  They also discovered that the umbilical cord only has one artery, as opposed to two.  The single-artery umbilical by itself is usually not a big deal, but in conjunction with other abnormalities it is a bad sign.  There are many possible reasons for the fluid, but it seems like the two most likely would be a heart defect or genetic defect (or both).  The fact that we are seeing this backup of fluid this early in the pregnancy concerns the doctors a great deal.  They want me to come back next week to take a closer look, which may give them more information as the baby develops.  This is probably a sign of things to come — that they will want to closely monitor the growth of the baby from here on out, particularly the heart and the fluid buildup.

Needless to say, we are worried.  Especially with the doctors throwing out terms like “severe chromosonal anomalies”, “trisomy 18”, “down syndrome”, and “might not make it to term”…. But since freaking out would do little good at this point, we are trying to “K-I-T” (as we tell our children) — “keep it together”.  The good news of the sonogram is that the baby is growing well and has a strong heartbeat.  No matter what happens, this baby is a blessing from God that we will cherish always.

So we are trying to distract ourselves and not think about it.  Not in denial, but just in an effort to keep our sanity.  And we are trying to focus on the good news.  Not in the way of false hopes, but remembering the great hope that we do have.  And we are so incredibly thankful for all that God has blessed us with, because it is already so much more than we could ever dream possible.

We went back and forth about whether to post this now, or wait until we know something more. But as you can see, we decided to share the news now; partly in case the news is even worse next time, and partly in case it’s really good next time.  In either case, it’s likely to get more intense.  It makes it slightly easier knowing that our friends and family are aware of what we are going through.  Please pray for our sweet baby.  And give your own babies lots of hugs and kisses.

Lastly, here are the pictures taken at that sonogram-of-doom (they’re actually very cute, I think):

Kaeta drew this today:

Well, I drew “Daddy” (because she asked me to), but she drew the rest. “Baby Jack” is the pretend baby in Kaeta’s belly. And the scribbly parts are tornadoes!

Welcomed into the world July 21 by Jonathan and Kaethe, and big sisters Amalia and Brinnly.  So yes, if you’re paying attention, that’s A…B…C.  At this rate, they might get through at least most of the alphabet!

Congrats, y’all!  We can’t wait to meet her!

So we’re only a week behind on this news…. Baby John was born happy and healthy to our dear friends, Barry and Karen on July 15th.  We can’t wait to meet him!