Great News

I know there's a lot of baby news coming out of Utah right now, but I have more to add to it. First of all, Shelly and Dave, we love you and can't wait for this to go all the way for you. It's so heartbreaking at any point in the pregnancy to lose a baby and we feel for you. I'm so glad that Shelly was even able to get pregnant and that you are feeling like you should keep trying. We'll be praying a lot for you.

Dave and Shelly know this because we talk to them quite a bit being so closeby, but I thought we should share our very good baby news with all of you. Steve had a blood test done on him to determine his zygosity (whether his O+ blood is homozygous--double positive, or heterozygous--positive/negative). With only a 25% chance of this outcome, it turns out that Steve is heterozygous. We were surprised and very happy. This means that we have a 50% chance of having a baby with negative blood. So far, both Katie and Presley have positive blood so we're about due for a negative-blooded baby. If the baby has a negative blood type my body will agree with the baby and show no signs of rejection at all.

We have our next ultrasound on Wednesday. If the baby is fine they will schedule an amniocentesis. This is where they put a huge needle into my belly down in to the baby's amniotic sac. They will pull fluids from the sac and this will determine, among other things, what the baby's blood type is. If it's negative we stop with the ultrasounds, the perinatologist visits and have a normal, uneventful pregnancy with my OB/Gyn as my only doctor. If the baby is not doing fine we know she has a positive blood type and we continue down the current path.

We are so excited, even if the baby's blood type is positive, because Steve's results mean that we have the possibility of having more children. We were being told to stop and think about taking permanent measures to ensure we have no more children. Each child will still have a great chance of problems, but an equally great chance of no problems at all!