It's sort of like having your very own Justice League..

Met with my care team yesterday.

What an amazing experience. I was in a room with four professionals who were doing everything they could for our Henry.

The MRI showed that the left side of his brain is swelling with excess fluid. About five cups currently. The right side is being squished away from the pressure.

What this means is that we have two options. The first being the cephalocentesis. The second would be to wait and do a cesarean.

Cephalocentesis is too often a fatal procedure. We would have to get permission from our ethics committee, as well as the hospital's ethics committee.

Here's a great breakdown of HPE & this procedure : http://beyondtheshortcoat.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/holoprosencephaly-and-cephalocentesis/

We've decided to go farther to term. The farther along we go, the better chances we have of using his heart valves for other babies.

The longer we wait, the better the chance he has to survive a few hours/days. There's no guarantee - but, we have a chance to spend some time with him.

We're looking at a cesarean at the end of May, when I'm around 36 weeks. We want to schedule it early enough so we won't chance me going into labor early. Early labor would mean an emergency cesarean, and we want this whole procedure to go smoothly and with the correct staff on hand. The chance that I might walk in with heavy contractions at 3am on a Sunday is too great a risk to take.

Our next big decision is to discuss just how far we want to go with comfort care measures. Do we want to shunt him immediately? Do we want to intubate him? Or do we just want to hold him? It's a big decision to make - to keep him with us or send him away to NICU to keep him alive as long as possible.

It's boiling down to quality of life versus length of life.

We can handle this. God gave us these decisions to make, this child to care for. He wouldn't do this without a plan. If it means that Jason and I are to be support for other families facing these issues, if it means that our experience is going to be a comfort for others, so be it. I've given myself up to the situation and am going to do as much as possible for my family. Any decision we make will be the right one for us.

On a pregnant note, all I want to eat is egg rolls and cream cheese wontons from the place by my old high school. Might have to make an Osseo trip today..