A Development

Wednesday morning I got a call from my OB with the results of my ultrasound. As expected, he told us that the placenta was no longer low enough to be a concern, but he also said that the report showed some echogenicity of the baby's lungs. I asked what that means and he said he didn't know and neither did the radiologist. (As in, they didn't know what it meant for the baby, although it would have been nice if he had at least defined the word for me.) He said they would repeat the ultrasound in three weeks. End of conversation.

So of course we went straight to Google to see what echogenicity is. Things started sounding pretty scary pretty quickly. What we learned was that basically, the more echogenic something is, the more solid it is. So the lungs looked more solid than they should appear on a sonogram. That can be caused by a number of conditions, some pretty benign, some pretty serious, a few fatal. It was like my world turned upside down in a matter of minutes. Here I was, sitting at my table, feeling my seemingly healthy baby girl move inside me, yet reading that what showed up on the sonogram could indicate that her lungs might not work once she was born and we might lose her.

And yet...God is good and He is sovereign and He allowed me to remember that even in the midst of this. Our baby girl has not for one second been out of His loving care. Zach prayed for us and reminded me that God loves her even more than we do. He will do what is best for her and for us.

Providentially, our church care group met at our house Wednesday night. If it had been anywhere else I would have been strongly tempted to skip (I cried all afternoon whenever I thought about all this), but God brought the care we needed to us. The group prayed for us, and several women who also see my doctor advised us to call back and request a level 2 ultrasound. Zach called the doctor the next morning, we finally heard back from him on Friday, and we are going to Pittsburgh for the ultrasound on Monday morning. If there is a problem, we should be able to find out what it is.

In the meantime, we have been able to get some information that has been somewhat reassuring. One of our acquaintances is a NICU nurse at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh, and she outlined for us what conditions are most often associated with echogenicity of the lungs. Although serious, they are mostly treatable and usually have good outcomes.

So we are feeling better about the situation. We are ready to deal with whatever we learn on Monday, whether it shows that Tuesday's ultrasound was mistaken and the baby is fine, or that our baby girl will require special care. Friends in Christ, we covet your prayers this week. We will let you know what we learn on Monday.