Our little miracle man

Well, I've officially made it to the half-way point in my pregnancy, and I must say it had been smooth sailing until about a week ago when we hit a gigantic, horrible storm that just sent our world crashing to the ground. As many of you know, we went in for our regular 18-week ultrasound as happy as can be to find out the sex of the baby and to see how much he (yep, it's a boy!!) has grown. Things looked great at first, but we could quickly tell something was wrong when the technician was focusing a very long time on one particular area near the heart. She was silent and we were terrified. She told us the big dark area was a pleural effusion (fluid in his chest) and a very serious condition, so she needed to bring more doctors in to look at it and talk to us. That was the beginning of our devastating time warp with so many thoughts running through our minds and so much unknown about our family's future. The doctor was very concerned and immediately did an amniocentesis to check for two of the possible causes of this--chromosome abnormalities (downs syndrome) and infections (CMV and Parvo) and referred us to the Fetal Care Center at Cincinnati Children's because of their expertise and treatment options they could provide us. The rest of the weekend we cried and cried, and as we researched, we discovered that the prognosis was very grim--high mortality. Words cannot describe how scared and upset we were, but we got so many phone calls, emails, flowers, and words of support that it was hard not to think positive. We began to hope for the best.
We got an appointment at the hospital in Cincinnati for Friday and bought a ticket to Indiana on Tuesday to be home with family because work was the last thing on our minds. While waiting for Friday to come, we got the amnio results back saying there were no abnormalities--our first good news!! Fast forward to Friday when we went in for the first ultrasound and Monte and I both immediately noticed that something looked different...where was the black area by the heart? Where was the fluid? The technician scanned and scanned, and finally we asked her where was the fluid and she said with a smile, "I can't find it anywhere!" Tears of joy immediately ran down our faces and the clouds began to part. We were ecstatic, but didn't want to get our hopes up too high just yet. By the end of my 7-hour day of tests, an MRI, echocardiogram, etc, the team of doctors was certain the fluid was gone. They told us that absolutely everything from his brain to his heart looked normal and he was in perfect health, and that the fluid was of unknown causes. We could rest assured that this will have no effect on his health at this point. Unbelievable!! We were overjoyed and shocked, and so very thankful for the prayers we received that helped our little miracle man to get that fluid out!
I am still considered high-risk pregnancy because of this and will be monitored weekly with ultrasounds to see if any fluid reaccumulates and that he is growing normally, but the doctors said there is nothing I could have done or should do differently that could have caused this in the first place, so to go about my pregnancy as normal. I can actually breathe now, and have never been happier, and I want to thank everyone who kept us (and little Sweet Pea) in their thoughts and prayers. We honestly could not have gotten through this without you. Thank you a million and we love you all!