A Sneak Peek

Ashlyn has had some important news that she has been sharing with people over the past few weeks.  For those of you that haven't had the chance to talk to her lately, I've decided that I would share her news for her on here.  This is the announcement that she has been making to just about anyone who will listen: "We're going to get a new baby at our house around Christmas time."  She is very excited about this, and is happy that she will get to be a big sister again.

Officially, the due date is January 8, 2012, but since my children don't seem to like to wait around until their due dates to be born (Ashlyn was born at 39 weeks, Lynnea at 38 weeks), I figured telling Ashlyn that the baby should be here "around Christmas" was a pretty safe bet.  On Monday I went in for an early ultrasound, mostly just to check my dates and to make sure everything is OK.  The doctors are treating this pregnancy as slightly high risk because of our history of having a baby with a heart defect.  Recent research has shown that the specific type of heart defect that Lynnea had appears to have a strong genetic component to it rather than being caused by environmental factors.  So, this baby is at a significantly higher risk than the general population of also having some sort of heart defect (though not necessarily the exact same defect as Lynnea, and not necessarily anything nearly as severe as Lynnea).  In August we will have a level 2 ultrasound and a fetal echocardiogram to check for any cardiac abnormalities.  Monday's ultrasound showed that everything seems to be going fine so far, but that my due date might be a bit off.  The ultrasound showed a due date of January 3 rather than January 8.  We haven't talked to the doctor yet to find out if they want to officially change the due date or not (typically, if the ultrasound due date is more than five days different than the calculated due date, then the ultrasound due date is the one that the doctors will use...since our dates are exactly five days different, it's impossible to know which date the doctor will choose to use). 

On Monday I also went in to have an MRI done.  This was not pregnancy related (in fact, the only reason I hadn't had one done sooner is because I am pregnant and it is unknown whether or not an MRI causes any harm to the fetus).  I have been having some vision problems since the end of March; specifically, I suddenly lost a significant amount of vision in my left eye at that time.  My vision hasn't improved at all since then (in fact, during my last exam it had gotten a little worse, though this could be due to the pregnancy because vision changes are fairly common during pregnancy), and after running several tests, the neuro-ophthalmologist determined that the problem is not with my macula or retina, which left the only other probable source of the problem being with my optic nerve.  The good news is that the MRI did not show any obvious signs of a brain tumor (yes, that was one thing that they were looking for), but it did show that there is some inflammation of my optic nerve, and that's what is causing my vision loss.  This condition is known as Optic Neuritis.  Beyond that, there was not a lot that they could tell from the MRI because the MRI had to be done without the use of any contrast dye (because contrast dye is not OK for Baby).  There is a chance that my vision will improve over time (though the fact that it hasn't improved at all yet isn't really a good sign).  Although sometimes Optic Neuritis occurs without any specific cause that can be found, it is often an early sign of Multiple Sclerosis.  Without doing an MRI with contrast dye, it is impossible to determine how likely it is that MS is or is not the cause in my case.  I will have bloodwork done to rule out a few other possibilities like Lupus and Lyme Disease, though I don't have any other symptoms of either of those, so it is pretty unlikely that they are the cause.