In this photo, Aaron and I are in a waiting room.  We are waiting to have a Fetal MRI done to look at Aaron’s brain.

Have you ever had an MRI?  It’s quite the experience.  They put you in this little tube-thing and the space is so tight in there that your nose practically touches the top of it. And you are supposed to hold perfectly still.  I mean, no moving at all.  And I’m thinking to myself, okay…I can hold still. No problem there. But we are trying to get an image of Aaron’s brain, not mine.  Just how am I supposed to make this little guy hold perfectly still?  There’s no way!

Sure enough, once the machine turned on, he started kicking and moving around.  It’s a loud machine and I’m quite sure the noise bothered him. I was in that MRI machine for about 30 minutes and he flopped around the entire time. I kept telling him to  hold still  but he ignored me. After it was done, the tech said she got some good images.  Hmmmm. I’m a bit skeptical about that. But we will see.

I have an appointment to discuss the MRI results with a pediatric neurosurgeon on Tuesday. Yes, you read that right:  a pediatric neurosurgeon.  Doesn’t that sound fun? This is a person that you don’t want your baby to ever need, right? Well, it turns out that on top of the Trisomy 13 complications, Aaron also has an encephalocele, which is a neural tube defect.  Go ahead and click on the link to learn about that condition. It’s not a good one to have. And because of this, there is a high probability that Aaron will need brain surgery soon after he is born, if he’s strong enough.   He is not the first child of mine to need brain surgery, but he certainly will be the youngest one.

Just one more thing for me to worry about, right?  My sweet baby boy. He’s sure got some things stacked  up against him.  It’s so unfair.   I could just scream at the unfairness of it all. But screaming accomplishes nothing, so I don’t do that.  Instead, I pray.  I pray a lot about his precious little brain, that the encephalocele does’t *grow too much more and that it won’t hurt his brain any further. This is what I pray about lately, the same way that I prayed for his heart. Hopefully God answers this prayer, too!

*Aaron’s encephalocele is still relatively small in size, about 1.5 inches in diameter, and is located at the top of his head, slightly down to the left.  As his skull grows, the encephalocele will grow, too, so we will need  to monitor that.  If it gets too big, I may have to have a c-section to ensure a safer delivery.

New here? Click on these links to read more about Baby Aaron and our choice to Carry to Term