If you are new to this website, you may want to go to “What’s Wrong with Bella” at the top of this page for a summary and context.

(the following is written by Christy, clearly not the level of writing everyone on the blog is used to reading from Patrick… but Patrick seems to have his hands full these days being the full-time breadwinner in addition to cleaning the house, cooking all the meals, and taking care of his wife on bedrest and an energetic 4 year-old and 1 year-old. He’s doing awesome!! If there was ever any doubt about the substance of this man (and there hasn’t been), it has been cleared up. Please don’t forget to pray for him during all this.)

That’s the quote from the fetal medicine doc in Houston*. She said that Bella is definitely “holding her own” even though she is just inching along in growth. She also said that she hopes this kiddo outgrows this mass. We are encouraged because we do have more than just hope that she will. We have so much to be thankful for. There is no sign of hydrops and she is stable. The amniotic fluid has not increased, and that’s great news. There has never been a baby who had both a CCAM (the large lung lesion) and VSD (the large hole in her heart) before. She is already a pretty unique little girl. Because this is the first time it has happened, there are a group of 30 doctors in Houston that have already met to discuss her case. There is so much that we don’t know and can’t know now. We do know that she is in the palm of the Lord’s hand and we can rest in that.

We have been unbelievably blessed over the past month with post cards, prayers, hugs, meals, phone calls, and countless other blessings from so many. It’s amazing how an unborn child can touch so many lives. We are so thankful to find a fetal medicine doc here in Dallas that we dearly love already. She is so encouraging to us during this most discouraging time. The picture you see at the top of the page was taken with a 4D sonogram in her office. We think she looks just like her sister, Savannah. Please continue praying for Bella to grow and there to be no hydrops and that the hole in her heart will close before birth.

I do not have to go to Houston until a week from this Friday. In the meantime, I’m being monitored here in Dallas at the Medical School here. It looks like if we can make it through the next 2 weeks with no hydrops we will be in the category of unlikely needing fetal surgery. Hydrops is always a possibility for Bella until delivery, but less likely after the next couple of weeks because the mass usually does not start growing again after it stops growing and the baby gets bigger. A lot of times the mass even shrinks. She will have to have the mass removed eventually even if it doesn’t cause problems for her. She will likely have open-heart surgery as well unless the hole closes before birth. That’s where all of you come in. Keep praying for her. She needs to stay inside Mommy for as long as possible to give her heart a chance to heal and for her lungs to develop.

*The MFM doctor in Houston is Dr. Karolina Adam. She is the one who accidentally discovered a connection between steroids and CCAM stopping growth just in the past few months. We are convinced that the Lord led us to her and the team of surgeons at Texas Children’s Hospital. I was given 2 rounds of steroids 5 days after the CCAM was discovered. Also, an interesting fact is that her father is the one who discovered that cervical cancer is caused by HPV. What’s so interesting about that is that he discovered this because nuns never got cervical cancer and that led him down the road to the HPV sexually transmitted disease as the cause. Nuns didn’t get cervical cancer because they weren’t having sex. Hmmm…