Welcome to our family journey

                                            WELCOME TO OUR FAMILY JOURNEY!!!!

                                                       Linden, Lani, Ada Lou & Ira Jo Sink

Let me start by giving you a glimpse into the small simple lives of my little family. My husband, Linden, and I will be happily married for 3 years this December. My husband works with his father at Hydro-growers, and I am a stay at home mommy and wife. God had an amazing plan for Linden and I from the get go! We met at a mutual friends wedding, dated, engaged and married within 10 months, then few shorts weeks later, after a routine doctors appointment, found out that we were going to have a hard time getting pregnant, if ever getting pregnant. Of course at the time it was devastating because we knew we eventually wanted a family, but we didn't know when, so we decided to pray that the Lord would give us a family when He saw fit. Little did we know the unthinkable would happen and just 4 months later, regardless what the doctors said, we would be expecting our first daughter. Ada Lou, born January 2015, healthy and happy as can be,  even with the emergency c-section we had to have because of her being breech! lol :) Fast forward to about year later, we find out God gave us another miracle due to arrive August 6th, 2016!

If you don't know yet, this pregnancy has been FAR from easy, or normal, from the very beginning! For example, bed rest or at that time, low activities, started at 10 weeks! Of course, at 10 weeks it wasn't a matter of health issue for the baby or I, it was more of an issue of the placenta being too low, plus first trimester trials. I horrible migraines and headaches that got so bad I would pass out and before this I have never had either a migraine or a headache, so the whole passing out thing while having a toddler at home was a small issue. Four weeks later they discovered the placenta still hadn't came up, Doctors first thoughts were, placenta previa, which sent me to 'almost' bed rest with even less activities at 14 weeks. I say 'almost' because no matter how easy the doctors tell you to take it, when you have a toddler running around, your bed rest is actually their nap time and actual bed time!At my 19 week appointment is when we found out we were having another *GIRL*! IRA JO :):). It's also when we found out that the placenta still had not came up, and this time they were certain that the placenta was stuck on my previous c-section incision, which meant there was no chance of me being able to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). I didn't think that the placenta being stuck was much of an issue..I was wrong! The way the doctor explained it to me was due to it being stuck to my incision, there was the potential that the placenta could pull off and tear. That could cause the baby to suffocate to death due to lack of oxygen if it tore to early in the pregnancy, or there could be a small chance of my incision reopening, and cause me to bleed internally, if the placenta was stuck good enough and was pulled away hard enough. So after that, we started to take bed rest/low activities pretty seriously. 

 After my 19 week appointment, I didn't have another appointment with an ultrasound for awhile, but I got my glucose test done, and that's when things got interesting! I got a call at about 25 weeks that I have gestational diabetes! [Woohoo just the news any pregnant mom wants!] The interesting thing was, they called me and told me that I was gestational diabetic because my numbers were off by just ONE digit. Let me tell you, my first thought when I heard that was, "WHAT?!?! YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I HAVE TO POKE MY FINGERS BEFORE AND AFTER EVERY MEAL FOR ONE DIGIT!?!?" Now don't get me wrong, it is still a serious thing to the doctors that the numbers were off, even if it was by one small tiny digit, but to the one poking their finger, NOT SO MUCH!!
Tuesday, May 24, 2016, at my 29 week appointment, I got an ultrasound. There was 2 reasons for this ultrasound:1) to see the location of the placenta, 2) to see if the baby was over weight or anything due to the gestational diabetes. Things then took a scary turn. After my ultrasound the nurse took my husband and I into a room to talk to the doctor about the results. We were expecting to hear "the placenta hasn't came up, it's making us nervous", pretty much the same thing we've been hearing just with a bigger concern this time....NOPE!! This time, the doctor runs in the room with a single ultrasound picture in hand, takes one look at Linden and I, and tells us to get our stuff together, get in the car and go to Kettering. Like dear in headlights, Linden and I froze, she explained to us, that our daughters stomach was full of fluid and that it was bigger than her head, but that she didn't know why this was happening. She said she was admitting us to Kettering right away and that we needed to get there as soon as possible. Scared to death and tears streaming down our faces we got in the car and headed to Kettering. Upon our arrival and getting into our room, I was hooked up to every fetal monitor you could think of, given steroid shots and getting blood drawn. We met with one of our high risk pregnancy doctors that evening; she did an ultrasound and tried to reassure us that she was going to do everything not to deliver our daughter, but there was definitely something wrong. 

Wednesday, our OB doctor came in to see us and she told us that if it wasn't for my gestational diabetes, she was going to cancel the ultrasound at our appointment the day before, the one ultrasound that was the most important. So to recap, that *1 digit* that I thought was so unbelievably outrageous, ended up saving our daughters life! HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD?!?! If it wasn't for becoming gestational diabetic, we would have never known anything was wrong until it was too late!  Later that afternoon we had another ultrasound done, this time by two high risk doctors who discovered that not only did Ira have fluid in her abdomen, I also had an elevated amount of amniotic fluid, which they diagnosed as Polyhydramnios. The good news was that Ira had fluid ONLY in her abdomen.  The fear was that she had fluid in other places called 'Hydrops' which can be fatal.  They used the term 'Fetal Ascites' to describe Ira's specific problem, which means that there is free fluid in the abdomen. They told us that they wanted to do an amniocentesis to draw fluid off of Ira's abdomen as well as some of my amniotic fluid.

Thursday we had a routine ultrasound, and then the fun began...the horrible intense contractions. The contractions that developed were caused by the amniocentesis and my last steroid shot. Thankfully some semi-good news came of this day. After the ultrasound the high risk doctors gave us her opinion of what the issue was or could be. In their opinion there was something wrong with Ira's bowel. They were fairly certain that her bowel had perforated and that there was small hole somewhere in her bowel causing the fluid to leak into Ira's abdomen. They also saw a white mass of something floating in Ira's abdomen; their guess was that it was a swollen bowel, they also saw that Ira's heart was abnormally large, but didn't know why. Either way, they said that Ira would need surgery as soon as being born to fix whatever problem she had in her abdomen. They told us that whatever the exact diagnosis of this was, they were certain they hadn't seen anything like this before...sure enough, we are 1 out of 100,000 that ever have a case that looks like this. The information was a big pill to swallow, but it was nice to finally hear what they 'thought' was wrong. 

Friday, we had a huge scare! Right before lunch, I was told I was not allowed to eat due Ira's heart rate not fluctuating correctly, leaving the doctors concerned and about to deliver. Thankfully, they held off on delivery and let the medication they gave me to deal with the contractions pass, that's when they saw Ira's heart rate become more normal. Unfortunately for me, that meant I wasn't allowed to get any more medication to help with the contractions. But, because of the scare, we had to meet with the NICU doctor to discuss what would happen if baby Ira would come at 29 weeks. Hearing the information he gave us, and the percentage of life expectancy for a sick baby that needs surgery ASAP on top of being premature, was absolutely devastating. That's when things got really 'real', my baby girl could die...

Saturday(30 Weeks) and Sunday nothing happened other than monitoring and daily ultrasounds. 

Monday was Memorial Day, so that was our one day of so called 'freedom' from the monitoring and etc.

Tuesday we had our routine ultrasound, but this time it didn't go so well. My amniotic fluid count was 35, 10 more than what it was Sunday, and Ira's heart rate wasn't fluctuating correctly again. This was enough to scare our high risk doctors into transferring us to the University of Cincinnati Hospital to get a second opinion from other high risk doctors as well as the fetal care team. They also wanted to have some sort of plan that could be put into action as far as what was to be done, when to deliver and etc. We arrived Tuesday evening and waited for testing to start the next day.

Wednesday started out with another ultrasound with two more high risk doctors. They started out by telling us that they as well, have never seen anything like what was on the ultrasound screen. Although they had answers for the extreme amount of amniotic fluid in my stomach, they didn't have an exact answer of what was going on in Ira's abdomen. They said that my amniotic fluid was building up because of Ira. The way one doctor explained it was, the amniotic fluid is suppose to be like the water in a bathtub, and Ira is suppose to be the bathtub. She is suppose to drink the fluid (the drain) and also urinate more fluid back out (faucet). Unfortunately, she isn't draining or drinking the fluid like she is suppose to because her belly is so full of fluid!  It would be like any of us....we eat or drink to much, get stuffed, then don't want to eat or drink anything else! Well, to help her better development of her lungs, she is suppose to drink the fluid and do practice breathing; she's only doing the practice breath, and not very often because the fluid build up in her abdomen is causing her so much discomfort. They then told me that the small swollen thing that was floating around in Ira's abdomen was probably not swollen bowel, but they weren't sure what it was. Thankfully, they said it wasn't any sort of tumor or anything; they said it looked like a hard piece of 'something'. Their educated guess, was that it was a piece of fluid or mucus that got hard in her bowel; causing there to be a blockage, then resulting in the bowel perforating because nothing could get by the hard blockage. If that was the case, it would explain the fluid in her abdomen, but it wouldn't explain the results of the amniocentesis. Before this, we hadn't heard the results of the amniocentesis, but come to find out, in Ira's abdomen was high levels of white blood cells. This puzzled everyone because babies inside the womb are very sterile, so there would be no reason for Ira to be making so many white blood cells, unless she was fighting an infection. My first thought after hearing the high amounts of white blood cells was leukemia, thankfully they said that there would be other signs of that, so that wasn't an option, but of course, an ultrasound can't show all infections, so what did they do...more tests! We were told the next step would be an MRI, which would show many different views that a ultrasound couldn't, other than that we were to wait for results.
Thursday morning we got the MRI, and the fetal MRI doctor was actually there on site, which is rare, and she read the MRI results and by that afternoon we were told that the doctors initial educated guess when looking at the ultrasound was about spot on. Except for one thing...turns out Ira's bowel is laying flat against her spine completely lifeless. Bowels are suppose to be like balloons full of air, Ira's looks like a popped balloon laying at the back of her body not doing anything but letting fluid go through. Hence, the reason for the excessive amount of fluid in her abdomen, but at this point, the doctors have a general idea of what was going. Only thing left for them to decide was if it was bad enough to get her out at 30 weeks or keep her in, so they tried to get in contact with the fetal surgeon from Cincinnati Children's (right across the road) and let him take a look at the MRI results. So until we got wind of what was going on, we had to wait to find out if we were going to meet our sick little girl that day or not.
Friday around lunch time, we finally found out we weren't going to be meeting our daughter, instead we were going home! We were totally confused! One day they weren't sure if they needed to take her out, & the next we go home?? Turns out the fetal surgeon said Ira was at no risk while being on the inside and that I could rest at home until I go into labor, then just go and deliver and he would take care of her from here. He first wanted to have a team meeting with us and all his associates before Ira arrived so that has been scheduled, but talk about a world-wind of emotions!! Before we left we got read our rights by the doctor, "Don't move off the couch, but to eat and shower, and expect your water to break at any given point in time!".....excuse me!?!? Yeah, turns out my amniotic fluid count has went up by 5 more...so as of Friday, my amniotic fluid count was 40! They told me at this point my body thinks I'm having twins, which if you would see me...it totally looks like it. Friday, one day before I was 31 weeks, my belly measured the exact same as it did when I was full term with Ada....yeah, I'm huge and just constantly getting bigger because the amniotic fluid has no where to go.

So at this point in time there's no more news, other than we made it home safely (to my parents house, I'm not allowed to be alone) and I have made a nice size dent into the couch already! Other than that we are waiting for Wednesday, June 8th, to get here, and see what comes of the big team meeting with the fetal surgeon and all of his associates, as well as the fetal cardiac team to discuss Ira's abnormally large heart, and fluid filled abdomen!
We have had so many people ask us what is going on, and etc...so we thought it would easier to let everyone know at the same time, any updates we have along our journey with little miss Ira Jo, on here!  We aren't sure how long this journey will last or what the outcome of any of this will be, but we will try our best to keep you all updated along the way, and for those of you who are praying, you may see specific things this way that you can pray for. Again thank you to all who have kept our little family in your prayers, we aren't sure what God's plan is for us out of all of this, but we are leaning on Him and his miraculous power, knowing that whatever His plan is, whether it is hard or easy, that He has everything under control and we are to just be still.

Stay tuned, we will update you on how the fetal team meeting went and what the plan is after our appointment on Wednesday! :)