Where we learn more about Ella's little fin!

Today, we had our specialist appointment at Children's Hospital with Dr. Peter Waters. He specializes in pediatric orthopedic surgery and handles many, many cases like ours. The visit was reassuring and we are very glad to have him on our team come October.

Assuming things continue along as planned, we will not see him again until Ella is between 4-6 weeks old. At that point, he'll see what she is actually born with and will help make a plan going forward. Their focus will be on goals of either pinching or pushing with that hand. He agreed that it is huge that she has full wrist function.

Some interesting facts we learned today:
- Ella has what they call a trans-hand amputation, which is the 2nd most common kind of limb difference (second only to when the arm stop growing just past the elbow.)
- Limb differences occur in anywhere between 1 in 30,000 and 1 in 300,000, depending on the type of limb difference.
- Her arms will continue to grow proportionally, but they will both continue to grow. So, whatever the proportional difference is between her right and left arms at birth will likely continue into adulthood.
- Prosthetics are not where they need to be (cosmetically and functionally), especially for something like this, so most kids don't use them.
- The Department of Defense is the biggest leader in research for hand transplants and other missing hand solutions.
- Finding a good solution to missing a hand ranks in the top five for research goals.- There is absolutely nothing genetic about limb differences like these.

And finally...
- National studies have shown that kids with a limb difference actually grow up to be happier and more well-adjusted than so-called "normal kids"

That's it for now... we have a lull of a couple of weeks before our next doctor's appointment!

What's in a Name?

As many of you know, Lew and I have known the name of our baby girl for a while now. We were going to wait until October to officially introduce her to the world.

But, as the wonderful emails of support poured in this past week, we realized that she is more than Baby Girl Forman. She already has strength and personality, and a name to go with it.

So, we are happy to tell all of you that her name will be Ella, short for Pamela Catherine. Pamela was Lew's Mom who he lost at an early age and as many of you know, Catherine has a long lineage on my side of the family.

We can't wait to meet the jumpy little monkey and introduce her to all of you in October...

Children's Hospital Ultrasound Day!

First of all, thank you to everyone for your support. It means the world to both of us and our little girl.



Today was our first visit to Children's Hospital. That place is amazing...designed to be comforting to both parents and children. Everyone that we encountered was awesome and we are thrilled that she is going to have their support once she arrives.



We had a rather long ultrasound and they confirmed everything that Mt. Auburn said about the hand and that otherwise, she is perfect. They agree that it's very unlikely that it is ABS, so they have very few concerns.

We are still going to meet the doc on Friday so that we can talk about a plan for when she is born, but otherwise, we shouldn't need to go back to Children's until after she arrives. The only new thing that they said is that at Mt. Auburn they thought her hand stopped at her carpals, but it does look like she has some meta-carpals. (http://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Image:Human_hand_bones_simple.svg) This means she could actually have a little but more there than we expected.


The wonder of going to a top-tier hospital is that they have great imaging for ultrasounds. Here is a picture of her sucking her thumb (on her right, non-affected hand):







And here is a 3-D picture of her face. She is already cute as a button...and will likely get cuter as her skin actually has time to develop more.






Finally, on the way out, we stopped by the lobby and found that they have a bunch of fish tanks to keep kids occupied...and one of them is set up to match Nemo's tank in the movie.




So, that's all for now...more updates as we move along...

Then and Now

Today, we are at 20 weeks, the halfway point of this pregnancy. So, here's a hint at our changing life.

This was 3 months ago...

And this is now...

Yes, she is already a Bruins fan!

Welcome!

We are starting this blog to hopefully chronicle our pregnancy journey, as well as the wild adventure we will be on when our baby girl arrives in October!