Hospital Choice, Lacking ECMO

Last week, after our weekly appointment we talked to our OB (Associate Professor) and Chairperson Professor in a short time. Chairperson said that they may want to induce labor after 35th week. This was really frightened for us, because we have read a lot of writings from internet, and heard from another experienced doctor who is working at another big hospital that preterm labor shouldn’t be preferred in these type of deficiency. Baskent Hospital is good and well-cared place and we have gone there for about three years. Doctors know us. But the hospital hasn’t so much experience on CDH babies. We learned that they had 13 CDH babies for the last 2,5 years. Six of them survived. We went to other big hospital in Ankara. It was Hacettepe University Hospital. They have 1 or 2 patient in every month from Turkey’s different regions. But there are very crowded as a public hospital and we don’t want to go for a serious condition like that. We met pediatric surgeon in Baskent Hospital. He said that after surgery is more important than surgery. Its NICU and caring conditions seems more comfortable. We decide there for surgery if it will be possible. When we learned that there is no ECMO in our country, we were disappointed and very depressed. Maybe, this means “going to football match with missed staff”. We pray for that our baby won’t need ECMO.

Tomorrow or maybe Wednesday morning, doctors in hospital will be in a ordinary meeting and as we learned from our OB, they (our docs and surgeons) will talk about our condition.

Aytekin and Emel.

Our Baby’s name

We talked about names a lot! But Emel is very hesitant person. Even when we go to shopping, she decide to buy anything hardly. One of favorite names for baby boy chosen by me is “Mert”. Mert means trustworthy, reliable, courageous, brave. I think our baby will have two names and the first one is “Mert”. God, please give long, healthy and happy lifes to Baby Mert and to all CDH babies.

Aytekin.

First Positive Messages

We saw comments from Sofia, Avery and Parker’s family members. We are very happy for that. We don’t feel loneliness so much anymore, because we have friends who understand us and pray for us from another side of the World! Thank you very much really! Our prayers for our baby and all CDH babies and their families.

Emel and Aytekin.

The First Entrance!

Hello. My name is Aytekin. My wife Emel and I live in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. We married in 1999. We didn't want to have any baby for the first two years of marriage, because Emel was only 19 years old. We thought "having a baby" was a great responsibility. Then we lived two losts, first was 6 week and the other was 8 week of miscarriages. My wife conceived a son through IUI. We were very happy with that! We continued all controls and take attention everything about gestation. At 28th week of pregnancy, in Ultrasound control our doctor said that baby's abdominal circumference was a little bit small. And he sent us to an OB experienced on scanning for a detailed examination. She noticed that his heart was on the right side of its axis and stomach was up. So our baby son was diagnosed left sided "Congenital Diaphragma Hernia". Then she arranged fetal echocardiogram and MRI visit for us on the same week. And we took genetic consultancy as well. One week later, we learned the first results. The heart was good-looking and normal but on the right. The other results were normal. Although Lung-to-Head ratio was 2.5 on the 28th week, 10 days later the issue was bad anymore. And ratio was about only 1. We were in a shock and hadn't so much information about this abnormal anatomic problem.

We go hospital weekly on every Wednesdays. Emel goes on Saturdays, too. She joins pregnancy exercise program.

This week is 32th week, due date is July 18th. Our baby's condition is always in our thoughts and our prayers.

I decided to prepare this blog. Because, I read tons of writings in the web sites but I saw that people didn't know CDH enough. I really impressed by blogs of CDH babies, Sofia, Audrey, Jolee, Jackson, Leah, Jax and angels Avery, Drew, Parker...
That's all are in our prayers. Please take us into your prayers too.

I will update blog in the future days, putting more advances, news and pictures about us in English and in Turkish as well.

P.S. Please forgive me for my poor English.

Aytekin.