#6 is on the way....

Alright, for those who don't know yet....the Crowe Family is happy to announce that a new little Crowe is on the way! We are due February 21st, though if this baby is anything like the rest of our children than he/she will probably arrive before that!

Below is my recent ultrasound pictures (taken yesterday).


The ultrasound technician said we had a busy little tyke who was moving around so much that his pictures kept coming up blurry when he was trying to measure things! I said that sounded like one of our kids alright! Anyways, though the baby is looking good, growing right on tract and weighs approx. 4oz right now. I am 14 weeks and 5 days along right now.

Our only big concern is the fact that one of my blood tests came back saying that I have antibody E. Now, lets see if I can explain this to everyone without totally confusing anyone! Everyone's blood cells have antigens attached to it (there's a huge long list of them). We are dealing with the E antigen. The doctor said I am two little e's (ee) and they are assuming that Doug has atleast one big E. So Doug and I both got to go in and get some more blood work done yesterday afternoon. They wanted to get a titer on me and they wanted to see what antigen combo Doug had (Ee or EE).

Now let me jump around a little bit more, since they do this blood test (to check for antigens) at every pregnancy and it never showed up with any of my other ones. Than they are assuming that it sometime during my delivery of CJ some of his blood crossed out of the "protective" zone and into my body and my body threw up the "intruder alert" and made antibodies up against it.

Alright back to Doug's and my blood...if Doug comes back as Ee than there is a 50% chance that he gave the baby the little e and since I'm ee I would of given the baby a little e as well and if that's the case than we should be just fine. Now if he is EE than he would of given the baby a big E and we are going to have to watch things alot closer (as well as if he gives the baby the big E if he is Ee). If the baby has the big E my blood cells could go across the placenta and attack the babies blood cells and could cause the baby to become anemic and very worst case scenario even die (the doctor says that is highly unlikely though). If the baby ends up becoming anemic they can give the baby a transfusion to help fix that problem. They also might do a amnio on me (depending on how our results come back) to see how much antigen E the baby has.

Have I totally confused everyone yet? I'm still trying to get a grasp on everything (so I could of said something wrong or mixed a few things up). The doctor did seem pretty impressed that Doug and I had understood things so well, he said most people don't have quite as well as an understanding when they tell them. I probably have Doug to thank for that since the questions he asked the doctor helped me to understand things better. But SSshhhhh...don't tell him I said that!

Anyways, though they have an excellent success rate for this kind of thing and we should have a happy and healthy baby in around 6 months or so! My pregnancy will just be alot more closely monitored (feels weird to be considered in the "high risk" group). I will see the specialist for this but will continue to see my regular OB as well for my regular appointments. Feel free to ask any questions and Doug and I will try to answer them the best we can. We will keep everyone posted! :)