Prayers for Baby G

As many of you already know, on Tuesday, July 15th the day before we left town to celebrate Rolf's sister Evie's wedding in North Carolina we had our formal ultrasound. This is the ultrasound where they measure and look at every part of the baby in detail to make sure that things are going okay, that the baby is the size that he should be, and to tell the sex. It was very exciting for us but very quickly became very scary. Because of the concerns with my high blood pressure, we were having our ultrasound done by a Maternal Fetal Medicine doctor with a specialty in ultrasound. On this day this turned out to be the first of many signs that God had us right where we needed to be. During the ultrasound the doctor noticed that there was something noticeably wrong with the baby's heart. He called a pediatric cardiologist, who just happened to not be busy to come up and look at the ultrasound. It only took the 2nd doctor a matter of seconds to review the ultrasound and agree. He then asked us to come down to his office where he would be able to do a fetal echo of the baby's heart. We left the first doctor with very little information other than that we were having a boy and they thought everything else looked normal. We moved down to the 2nd doctors clinic and they were waiting for us to get there, another sign that God was with us because in Navy medicine it is very rare that you ever get right in to see the doctor. After about an hour and a half of fetal echo the doctor had some answers for us about what was going on. We found out that our sweet baby boy has a severe and relatively rare heart defect called Truncus Arteriosus I am not evening going to try to explain it but if you are interested check out this link: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=11073.

The Thursday after Evie's wedding we had an amniocentesis done to find out if there were any other possible complications for us to be concerned about (all of which were very, very scary). The amnio in and of it self is very scary because it carries a slight risk for miscarriage of the baby. The doctors assured us that the benefits of knowing something far out weighed the risk and we just prayed that everything would be okay. We spent 11 days waiting, worrying, and praying about what else might be wrong with our little guy and that God would let His will be done and would bring us a peace and understanding no matter what the test results were. On Wednesday, August 6th we found out that all of the results from the amnio were normal and they don't believe there should be any unforeseen complications with the baby. For us this is truly an answered prayer and in my opinion a miracle because the odds were about 50/50 that something else could be wrong. We feel like we have made it over a very big hurdle and that God has truly blessed us but we do still have a long road ahead.

Right now we are still trying to come to terms with what this means but know that God has a plan and has chosen us to be this little guys parents for a very special reason. What this all means for us is that nothing about delivering this little guy or his first few months of life are going to be normal. With in the first 3 to 7 days of his life our baby will require an open heart surgery to repair the defect that he has. The Navy hospital across the street from our house where we thought we would be delivering will not be able to perform this surgery. Since this is one of the more rare heart defects we are currently looking at either going to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) or Duke Children's. For us going to Duke would be like going home but CHOP is the #1 Children's hospital in the US, which is pretty hard to turn down. Once we decided where we will be going I will more then likely go to that area around 35-36 weeks (the end of October) to be near the hospital for weekly appointments, etc. After the baby is born we will more then likely be whereever we go for about another month depending on how the baby is doing and how the surgery goes.

We ask that you pray for our sweet little boy and that he continues to grow strong while in the womb. We ask that you pray for us for daily strength to deal with whatever may come our way as we deal with all of this. We ask that you pray for the doctors that will be delivering the baby and for the doctors and nursery that will do the surgery and take care of him after. We feel so blessed to have such amazing friends to be able to share with and to ask to pray for us.

IT'S A....

BOY and we can't wait to meet him!

I am sure many of you have already heard our exciting news but we couldn't be happier to announce that in November we will be welcoming a sweet baby boy to our family. Until he makes his way into this world we are going to be keeping his name a secret which right now isn't that hard for us since he doesn't yet have one. In the meantime he has acquired several nicknames: Baby G, Itty Bitty Baby (from Aunt Laura), Little Man, Dude, Butter Bean, and a few others.

We put all of the ultrasound pictures into a slideshow. As you can see he has grown a lot over the last few months and doesn't seem to be a very modest little fellow. He has made sure to confirm for us that he is a BOY at each and every ultrasound. We hope you enjoy Baby G's first baby pics, there will definitely be lots more to follow.

We Survived

On Friday, June 27th, Rolf graduated from his internship year at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. To say the least it has been a year filled with many challenges for the both of us but in the end we not only survived this year we thrived this year. Rolf was award "Intern of the Year" for Internal Medicine which was an amazing accomplishment given the competitive group of interns he was up against. The best part of winning the award was that he had no clue that he was going to be getting it until they called his name. In addtion to winning the award Rolf is also 1 of 5 interns selected to stay on at NMCP for residency, another great accomplishment from the past year and for Rolf a goal that he is very happy to have achieved.

Rolf with RADM Nathan (Commander of NMCP and a fellow IM doc)

I will have to say that after 4 long years of medical school with much of 3rd and 4th years spent with Rolf away for weeks and sometimes months at a time, to me internship really didn't seem all that bad because at least when he was off he was at home and even when he was at work he was just across the street. During the last year Rolf has spent many long days and a lot of long nights in the hospital. Internship year is set-up so that every 4 weeks he would start on a new rotation. During this past year he did several months of internal medicine or working on "the wards" as they call it, a month in the ICU, a month of orthopaedics, a month of anesthesiology, a month of dermatology, a month of ER, 2 weeks of psych, and 2 weeks of OB/Gyn. I think that just about covers it.

One of the ways we were able to keep our sanity this year was by still being able to eat dinner together most every night, one of the benefits of living so close to the hospital. I quickly became a pro at figuring out what meals can most easily be packed up and transported to the hospital for nights when Rolf was on call -- LEFTOVERS! And when I was feeling really lazy or Rolf had had an especially hard day -- pizza or take out. There were several nights when I would be pulling in the gate only to have Rolf call and tell me a patient had just arrived that needed to be admitted or that things had hit the fan and dinner would not be happening but for the most part we were able to enjoy a little time together most nights that he was on call.

Another way we were able to keep our sanity this year was by meeting a lot of great people and making a whole group of new friends. Rolf was able to meet a great group of guys mostly all internal medicine interns and I was able to make become good friends with several of their spouses.

With friends following the graduation ceremony

For us internship brings to an end a year of hardship and struggles but also great joy and accomplishment. We feel truly blessed to have been challenged both personally and professionally this past year and to not only survived but to have thrived! We will be saying farewell to many of our new friends but hold hope that being a part of this great Navy family our paths will soon cross again.

Residency here we come!!

"The Babymoon" - Hawks Cay Resort, Duck Key, Florida

Soon after finding out we were going to be having a baby we decided it would be fun to go on a "Babymoon". For those of you not up on the lingo, a babymoon is that one final getaway together before things really get crazy. After going back and forth between resort or cruise, flying or driving, inside the States or out of the States; we decided to head down to the Florida Keys. Neither of us had ever been to the Keys before but had heard really good things and wanted to check it out. We got a great deal through Expedia on a resort highly recommended by The McManus' (Holly's college roommate's family from Ft. Laudy) and really great tickets through AirTran direct to Fort Lauderdale. We flew down on the Wednesday after Memorial Day, picked up our black Mustang convertible, and hopped on A1A headed south for the Keys. After a great drive south with the top down most of the way, we arrived at Hawks Cay a little before sunset. We checked into our beautiful room and even got an upgrade from our already great deal! We had a first floor, corner room with a king size bed and its own deck complete with lounge chairs located just steps from the Tranquility Pool (a nice way of saying "No Kids Allowed"!)

The resort was truly amazing and just what we were looking for. We spent the first day settling into the resort, lounging by the pool, and doing just about as little as possible. Here are a couple of pictures of our beautiful resort and my handsome husband:

After a day spent lounging by the pool, playing cards, reading, and enjoying virgin dacquiris we decided to venture down to the infamous Key West. We again hopped in our Mustang and hit the highway, enjoying what is truly one of the most beautiful drives in the U.S. Although, Virginia was still enjoying very spring like temperatures South Florida was headed full swing into summer, something we were not quite prepared for. Here is a pic of Holly taking a break for a piece of Key Lime pie, a bottle of water, and a little A/C:

We spent most of the day exploring Key West, taking in the sights and sounds. Of course we visited the Southernmost Point in the Continental U.S., as no trip to Key West is complete without it.

After exploring the city and hitting all of the important and doing a little shopping, we enjoyed a late lunch over looking the water and wishing we could hope on one of the many boats arriving from a day out fishing. Here are some of the fish that were hanging out pierside (I think they are tarpon):

We spent the last day of our trip again hanging out by the pool and were even treated to a fireworks show on Saturday night over looking the water as part of a wedding reception being held at the resort.

We really enjoyed our babymoon and would highly recommened it to anyone expecting a little one. We loved the resort and hope to make it back there someday with our new family. As much as we enjoyed being there just the two of us this place was very family-friendly and would make an awesome vacation with family and friends.