Well blame the pain-killer loopiness from yesterday for making me forget to tell you how big Brandon is. He was born 7lbs 6oz and was 19 inches long. He's got light brown hair (not much of that though) and really long fingers and toes. :)
This morning actually finds us rested and calm. :) We've heard that today will be worse though and he'll be awake much more! Oh well! We're having a blast.
Happy New Year everyone!
Colleen, Joby & Brandon
Hello Everyone!
Joby and I are so excited to introduce Brandon Nicholas Messer to you! He was born this morning at 8:29am via c-section. Brandon was still breech so we had to have the surgery. Joby and I got to the hospital at 6am and a couple hours later we got to hold our precious baby boy. It was amazing, totally amazing. It was also a little sad when Noah Riley was delivered at 8:30am and we got to see our little boy who didn't survive the pregnancy. He was beautiful too though and we are very glad we spent some time holding him.
I am including a few pictures for you so you can see how cute Brandon is. He is so sweet and cuddly. So far he's been a golden child, very good and calm and sweet. Enjoy the photos. There will be more to come when we get him home and in to some of his very cute new clothing!
I have been able to get up and get walking around today. I'm sore from the surgery but overall doing very well. If I talked to you today during one of my many hours on pain medication and I sounded totally goofy, I'm sorry. The morphine and percoset totally made me drowsy and out of it. Now I'm just managing the pain with an anti-inflamatory and everything is going really, really well. If all continues to go well then we'll get to go home on Sunday after lunch time.
We'd love to show off Brandon to all of you so if you would like to stop by you will be welcome. I will ask though that you call first to make sure that we're not napping or feeding him.
I hope this note finds you well and we wish you all a Happy New Year! We'll be ringing in the new year at the hospital but couldn't be happier that we're here with our son.
Love,
Colleen & Joby
Hey Everyone!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (well, soon)!
Just a quick note to say hi and that things are well in the Messer household. I'm sorry that I haven't written recently. Some of you have sent emails to say hi and I've just been crazy busy with Christmas and cleaning (surprised?). I'm trying to get the house ready for the baby and the weeks...months... years that follow when I won't be able to clean again. :) But, I actually remembered (amazingly) to take pictures of the baby's room today and am including a few on this email. We think it's adorable! Janet helped me paint the walls and my mother made the farm wall hangings. I'm so excited for him to sleep in here (although that won't happen for a while anyways!).
Anyways - we hope this email finds you all happy and healthy too! We look forward to sending you his birth announcement and pictures soon!
Thank you (again) for all the friendship, love and support! We appreciate all of you.
Love,
Colleen & Joby
Hey Everyone,
I want to start by first thanking everyone for being so supportive in the past month. Joby and I couldn’t have made it through the last few weeks without you. I appreciate every phone call, email, card, flowers and everything. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, our relationship and the kinds of people we have in our life and we are very grateful to know you all. Thank you.
So…
We’ve had two doctors appointments since they day we learned one of our twins died. Last week I saw my regular doctor and he gave us a good report on the status of our baby boy. We were able to go in on Labor Day and spend a lot of time looking at him on the ultrasound when no other patients were there and he was moving around a lot. (More on this subject – Our little boy is a huge Gator football fan… Some people might tell me that the noise from the game is what makes him kick so much… but I’m going to believe he’s a Gator in the making. :-) He definitely kicks a lot when we’re at the games. It’s really fun.) Anyway – the doctor thinks he looks good and as of Labor Day his weight was approximately 1 pound 1 ounce. So that’s normal too. We left the appointment feeling hopeful but didn’t want to send out any updates or anything until we went to see the specialist this week.
So Tuesday Joby and I went to Shands to see the specialist doctor. (Our appointment was for 10:30am… and we didn’t see the doctor until 12:20pm. Yeah, it was frustrating.) This doctor told us that the brain, heart, blood flow, and everything looked good. He still can not detect any kind of brain damage. It appears that the slightly prominent bladder, slightly thicker heart wall and increased amniotic fluid that he saw at the last appointment have all corrected themselves and our baby’s size, etc is all normal. He weighed approximately 1 pound 3 ounces too so he’s growing. We started to breathe a sigh of relief until he brought up his only concern. The doctor was able to see our baby’s bowel on the sonogram (something called Echogenic bowel). Basically part of the bowel appears moderately whitish but not quite solid, bright white like bone structure. The doctor said that the color was not quite bright enough that he would normally mention it to the patient. But given our hist ory with this pregnancy he wanted to let us know what the possibilities are.
The scary things:
The visible bowel could be an indicator of a chromosomal disorder such as Downs Syndrome and Cystic Fibrosis. Luckily the likelihood of this is low because all of my blood work screens came back negative for Downs, and I am not a CF carrier so that is not really even a possibility (ultra rare test errors aside). Plus, the doctor can not see any other indicators on the ultrasound that it could be Downs, like no water on the brain, no excess fluid build up at the base of the neck, etc. Everything else looks perfectly normal. We could have an amnio done but the risks for that are higher than the chance of my blood work tests showing a false-negative result. Given everything else that has happened it’s not a chance we’re willing to take right now. The echogenic bowel could also mean a type of viral infection. Something that could be very bad but nothing we can do anything about.
The more probable things:
Echogenic bowel is also associated with two other possibilities… two that more likely fit the big picture of what happened when one of our boys died. The least risky possibility is that there is a small amount of pigmentation in the amniotic fluid that has leeched from the other baby’s sac (albeit sterile and no risk to our surviving twin). If it is a pigmentation problem then it just means our boy is swallowing his amniotic fluid (per normal) and it’s staining his bowel system.
The other possibility is that at the time of death for the one baby there was a loss of blood pressure in the surviving twin causing part of his bowel to physically die. This would mean that when he is born he would have to have an operation right away to remove the dead bowel section and repair the problem. Luckily babies don’t need their bowels until after birth anyways because they get their nutrients, etc through the umbilical cord. It’s a fairly common surgery and although still scary, definitely manageable. The good news is that in our specialist’s personal experience (over 18 years of high risk pregnancy work) when he’s seen echogenic bowel as a result of loss of blood pressure from the death of one twin, he has also seen brain damage (since the brain is more sensitive than the bowel for loss of blood pressure)… and our doctor doesn’t see any brain damage on his level 2 ultrasound. That doesn’t mean it’s not there, but it’s far less likely.
So like the doctor said, he was hesitant to even bring the echogenic bowel up because it’s not visible at a level that he would normally bring it up to other patients. Often (~50%) they’ll see this on one ultrasound and it will be gone by the next. So we are cautiously optimistic that nothing serious is wrong with our baby. It feels like we’re on a HUGE rollercoaster but given all the information about all the possibilities, we’re keeping perspective as best as possible.
Overall we have been doing a lot better than we were when we last wrote you. We’re working on names for our boys still and have looked at nursery themes (and I think we may have decided on a theme)… more on that later… We won’t order furniture or start that process though for a little longer. I want to clear a few more weeks without problems. Yesterday I went in for my very first massage… it was awesome. Yes, I went to a massage therapist that specializes in pregnancy massages so no worries on injury to the baby. :-) As it turns out my insurance covers all but $15 of my massages and I can get one every week for the rest of my pregnancy plus every week for up to three months after my pregnancy. Yeah, a one hour full body massage every week for $15. I can totally be ok with that. I also get a lavender scented paraffin hand treatment each week too. All included. :-)
So I hope this fills you in a little bit on what is going on with us. I can’t reiterate enough how much your support has meant to us. Thank you again.
I hope you all are doing well and I also hope to bring you all good updates from here on out! More soon…
:-)
Colleen & Joby
Hey,
I’ll preface this email by saying I have some complicated news for everyone today.
Joby and I went to the doctor’s yesterday morning for the ultrasound that would tell us what sexes our babies are (they’re boys – my dream wasn’t completely right!). My appointment started off fairly well, we found out that all of our chromosome screens came back negative, but after a few minutes of the ultrasound I knew something was wrong and asked my doctor what it was. That was the moment we found out that one of our babies had died. I can’t really explain the extreme shock and disbelief that fell over us when the doctor told us this sad news. They think it happened around two weeks ago, near my 17th week. I am 19 weeks now.
Within 45 minutes we were on the way to another hospital (my doctor is at North Florida Regional and we were sent to Shands at UF) to consult with a Perinatologist (an OBGYN who specializes in high risk and multiple gestation pregnancies). While at Shands we had another series of ultrasounds and the doctor was able to get an idea of why one of our twins didn’t make it. There are two reasons, one major reason and one contributor, why our baby didn’t survive. The main reason is that his umbilical cord did not attach to my placenta directly, but rather affixed in the membrane off to the side. That means that there probably was never a really a good flow of blood and nutrients to this baby. This alone might have meant he could never survive to full-term, although we’ll never know that for sure. The other contributing factor is something called Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. This disorder, which only occurs in identical twin pregnancies, is when the babies’ blood supplies b ecome mingled due to a sharing of blood vessels and one baby begins to siphon blood from the other. Our doctor at Shands didn’t see any major signs of TTTS during my ultrasounds, only a mild case of extra fluid around the surviving twin and a mildly larger bladder and thicker heart. He did tell us though that if he plugged in the numbers they would still fall in to “normal” range… which does make us feel better. In most TTTS cases a twin doesn’t die this quickly, but if his supply of blood was already stressed by the umbilical cord position, this might have worsened the situation. Again, we’ll never know for sure. Usually the siphoning or sharing of blood occurs over time and both babies become sick, one fighting hard to handle the extra blood and fluid volume while the other fights to get enough nutrients. Many TTTS twins can survive but often are born prematurely and with complications, and things are often much harder for the “donor” baby. In other cases, parents can lose both babies. For that we do find ourselves fortunate that we can still look forward to bringing one little baby boy in to the world.
Regarding the health of our surviving baby boy… the Perinatologist at Shands is very optimistic that he’ll do fine. The doctor did an extensive (and I mean extensive) screening of him, measuring the blood flow through his umbilical cord, his brain, and all his major veins and arteries. He looked at his heart, all the chambers and valves, and then took a thorough look at his brain to check for any signs of brain damage that might have resulted from his brother’s death and loss of blood due to the sharing of blood vessels. (The equipment he used at Shands showed things in amazing detail and was definitely very high tech.) He could not see any signs that any brain damage occurred and did tell us that if any were to happen, it would have happened already and there is no risk for any further damage. We also learned that at this point in our baby’s brain development he probably would be able to overcome many obstacles since the brain is still forming and growing and is adaptable.
And to make a somewhat light of a terrible situation, we’ll be very happy even if he only gets B’s instead of A’s someday.
Regarding my health… so far both doctors don’t foresee any further risk to me or our living baby with the way things are now. I can continue my activities, as normal, with some minor changes and basically we’ll keep monitoring everything. My blood pressure is good, my health and weight are good and the only thing “wrong” with me is that I am anemic. So I’m on iron supplements which, guess what, can cause nausea (great). I’m going to be seeing a doctor every two weeks to track my progress and our baby’s progress, with visits to both my normal doctor at North Florida Regional and also the Perinatologist at Shands. At this point we really have no idea how long I’ll carry. Our hope is to make it as close to 40 weeks as possible.
We are, of course, completely devastated over losing our baby. It hasn’t really, completely sunk in yet because we have made so many plans for having two come home. It’s a big shock and while I know, intellectually, that there was absolutely nothing we (or the doctors) could have done to prevent or fix this, it still feels like I should have known something was wrong. We are definitely grieving but know that we still have something very special to look forward to. In fact, while we are writing this at 11:30 Wednesday night we just felt our baby boy kick me for the first time. Maybe this is his way of reassuring us that he’s ok. I honestly can’t tell you how happy that makes us right now. If anything can come from this we have learned to appreciate each other, life and our love even more than before. We’re working through everything one hour at a time and eventually we’ll end up ok.
I’m including a picture of our living baby boy on this email so you can see how cute he is growing to be. The other baby boy is not in this picture because we didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.
We are also ok about talking to others about everything we’ve written today. If you have questions, feel free to ask - write or call or ask in person. If you don’t, we understand that too. We want people to know about both our baby boys and won’t forget about the one that didn’t survive. I know that some of you already have heard this news and have respected our privacy for a couple days. We appreciate that and all your support. You are welcome to contact us if you want to.
I hope to have good news for you all in the coming weeks and months. We’ll keep you informed.
Love,
Colleen & Joby
Good morning,
Many of you receiving this email have already heard the news but for those of you who haven’t… I’m pregnant! We found out at the beginning of May but waited until the end of my first trimester to tell everyone. We’re thrilled, of course, but I have to say a little shocked when we found out that I’m pregnant with TWINS. Yes, twins. I’m attaching one of my sonogram pictures... It’s pretty obvious there are two! The doctor told us that there is a 90% chance the twins are identical but we won’t know the sexes until the end of August. Yes, we are going to find out! At this point we need to be as prepared as possible! And I’m of the opinion that it’s a surprise no matter when you find out.
Some of you have asked if twins run in our families. Yes, actually on both sides. Joby’s mom, Janet, is an identical twin! And I found out this past weekend that my dad’s sister’s twins are identical. (I always thought they were fraternal). So I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised really. The funny thing is that we’ve been joking about this for a long time. A lot of people in our families have told us we would have twins… and when I showed Joby the sonogram pictures he smiled, studied them, then looked shocked and said “this was supposed to be a joke.” Yeah, we laughed a lot that day. The next day the fear set in!
What’s even more bizarre is that the night of Mother’s Day I had a dream that I was pregnant with twin girls with blond hair & blue eyes. It felt so real that I went out that morning and bought a home pregnancy test. We took it at lunchtime and yes, it was positive. I told my doctor about this at my first appointment and he sort of laughed and said since I had brown eyes my baby would have brown eyes. (Not true, Joby is blue eyed and I carry the blue gene from my Dad so I could have blue eyed babies!) Anyways – at the second doctor’s appointment when I had my first sonogram done and it turned out to be twins the doctor couldn’t believe it because he remembered my dream. It’s too bad I can’t dream what the lottery numbers are going to be!
Some of you have asked how I’m feeling. Not bad actually. I haven’t had morning sickness per se. I’ve had a lot of all day nausea but that’s pretty much gone away and I only feel sick if I don’t eat every few hours. The only really bad thing that has been going on is that I’m already having some sciatic nerve pain in my lower back. That’s been fun. Other than that I’m just tired all the dang time. I’m waiting for that second trimester “high” to kick in here so I get some more energy. :-)
Oh – I’m technically due January 10th. But twins tend to come early and full-term for twins is 36 weeks. So I probably will deliver sometime in early December, hopefully not too close to Christmas for their sakes when they are older!
I’m sorry if you are just finding out over email! I’ve been calling as many people as possible and since we were in Jacksonville this past weekend, we got to tell many in person. I’d tell you all in person if I could.
I hope you all have a great day!
Hugs,
Colleen :-)
The Life of Brandon
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