This girl is already very time consuming!

Let me explain... some of you already know a lot of this, but I have to write it all out for those who don't know and for my personal reference later.
The day we found out that our little one was coming in all her bows and ribbons glory, we also found out that she has a congenital defect. Yes. It sounds awful. But that is how the Dr. explained it to us. Along with words/phrases like "open fetal surgery", "poor lung development" and "mortality rate". YIKES! Needless to say I was FREAKING OUT!!!
What she has is called a Congenital Cystic Adenomatoid Malformation (CCAM) and it is very rare (1 in 30,000). My OB is young and has only seen it 2 or 3 times, and that was probably in medical text books! I REALLY like this doctor but he is very inexperienced with this problem. So we decided to keep it under our hat for a few more days until we could see a perinatologist and get some more direct answers. We didn't want a whole bunch of people freaking out. I had that part covered.
So first we saw a perinatologist who did another ultrasound, confirmed the diagnosis and dismissed all my questions with the same "its too early to tell" answer to everything. Here's where "she's very time consuming" comes in - this was an hour and a half appointment! I was trusting at first but the more I thought about it and talked to people, the more I realized that he really didn't give me what I needed. I need to be informed. For better or worse, I gotta know the possibilities and how they'll be handled. So I asked my OB to give me a referral to another perinatologist for a 2nd opinion.
This time I got what I wanted. She was VERY (3 hour appointment - NO JOKE) thorough and gave me much more information. She was willing to go thru the "what if's" with us and then assured us that more than likely those "what if's" would remain irrelevant in our case.
Okay, so what the crap is a CCAM!?!?!? Basically, it is a fluid filled cyst on the lung. Her's is right next to her heart. The biggest complication we could potentially see (though very unexpected at this point) is if it grows and pushes the heart to the side. This can cause fluid retention in many areas of the baby's body because of the pinching of blood vessels (called Hydrops). Once this happens prognosis is not good. So we won't go any more into that. But there are warning signs that the docs will watch for to know if hydrops is a possibility. Then steroids can be given to help develop the lungs more quickly, reduce the chance of hydrops and ultimately be ready to deliver at any time.
What is more likely in our case is that we will see very little, if any, growth of the cyst over the next 6-8 weeks and then it may even regress in size. She may or may not need assistance at birth so I'll deliver at a Level III hospital. But we are figuring that delivering there will be more of a precaution than anything.
We are definately NOT freaking out anymore. I had a blessing after we first found out about all of this and I have had so much comfort that everything is going to work out. We are so blessed to have this problem and not a severe, life altering, never-be-a-normal-kid kind of problem. So long as she makes it thru the pregnancy and the first little bit of life, she is expected to live a normal, healthy life. For that we are SO grateful. We can't wait to have her rolling around on the floor with her brothers. We can't wait for the struggle its going to be to keep Mr. Zack from mauling her. Aiden gets the "be careful" stuff, but Zack will be a whole 16 months old. We'll see how that goes. And we can't wait. Here are a couple of pics from our ultrasounds. We have a TON, but even this mom isn't sure how many more profile pics we really need! We got a pic today that is 3-D or 4-D and you can see she has her legs crossed - very cute! (but I forgot to get the CD, and I'm not scanning it in, so you'll have to wait...)
YEA FOR LITTLE GIRLS!!!!!
And for anyone wanting to know what this thing looks like, this is a picture of the heart (on the right of the pic) and the cyst (looks like a big black thing on the left)