Elisa

Elisa Josephine, (nickname before birth "Baby Beluga" :)  )


Her Story and Diagnosis:
At our 19 week scan on November 18th 2014 they found that Baby Beluga wasn't growing the way she should. She was an average of 3 weeks behind, the placenta was much larger than it should be and her amniotic fluid was low. She was  diagnosed with Severe IUGR, (Intrauterine Growth Restriction) and was 1st percentile for growth and weight. Basically there was an issue with the placenta that was preventing nutrients from reaching her.

At first diagnosis they gave her a less than 10% chance of survival. At that point the doctors suggested termination, but that is not something we would want to do. We wanted to give her the life we could, even if that was just life in utero.  This blog was started after her diagnosis, to document our time with her, and also for me to talk about our loss with Luca, and stress of a difficult pregnancy.

On January 20th 2015, nearly 10 weeks after her diagnosis, Elisa Josephine was born sleeping at 28 weeks. It was both the best and worst day of my life.  Best in that I got to hold her and spend the whole day with her after she was born, but the worst in that I never got to hear her cry, never got to hold her in my arms alive, and that I didn't get to take her home.  She joined her older sister in heaven and made me mom again to another angel.


Her Nick Name: Baby Beluga
We gave her the nick name her less than a week after we found out we were pregnant. At this time we obviously didn't know if she was going to be a girl or a boy, and we wanted to be able to call her something more than just 'baby'. Just a few days after we found out we were pregnant we took a vacation on an Alaskan Cruise. While on this cruise was when we had our first instance of how rocky this pregnancy would be, I started spotting about half way through the cruise. I was able to get a hold of my OB and was put on modified bed rest. After that we basically just had to wait to get back home to see if everything was OK. There were a lot of emotions, between being convinced that we had lost the baby, to glimmers of hope. It was around this time that we saw some whales off the ship. Mr. V and I both thought about the "just keep swimming" from Finding Nemo, and somehow the song Baby Beluga popped in both our heads. (you will see it a common theme that we actually do break out into song at random times...). From there the name stuck :)

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