BOY OH BOY!!

That's right.... It's a BOY!! We are so excited to be "evening out" our family; in more ways than one. Justin is excited to even out our house boy-to-girl wise, and the new baby will also make an even parent-to-kid ratio (ahh! scary!)

His name is Brigham Justin Greer and so far Carrie's called him both "Bub" and "Gigah". I guess she still has 5 months to learn how to say "Brigham" a little better. She loves to give my tummy kisses and then likes to pull up her own shirt to look at her tummy. I think it probably wasn't the greatest idea to learn where the baby was and "belly button" at the same time. Cute though :)

At the ultrasound this morning we got a profile shot with his hand up by his face (we have an almost identical one of Carrie).I know it's hard to tell, but here's a foot (toes are on the left)

And here's "the proof". He's a pretty shy little guy and had his legs totally squeezed together the whole time. We got just enough of a peek though... He's a boy :)

He's right on my dates as far as size goes, has all the necessary organs, 10 fingers, 10 toes etc. so everything looked pretty good. We did, however, have an unexpected surprise when we met with the doctor after the ultrasound...

Brigham has what's called a DIAPHRAGMATIC HERNIA

This means his diaphragm has a hole in it which is letting his stomach and intestines come up from his abdomen into his chest. This will mean his left lung will be very undeveloped (just because there won't be any room for it to grow in his ribcage). He will need surgery to repair it right after birth and will be in the NICU for probably a couple of weeks with recovery and breathing problems.

Luckily, we know about it now. This is a big step in helping him get the medical attention he'll need at birth. I will be seeing a perinatologist in the next few days to get better quality ultrasounds and more in-depth specialist advice. I will likely be seeing them for the rest of the pregnancy so we can keep up on Brigham's development more closely.

Another "luckily", I've been a NICU nurse before. Although it certainly won't be fun, at least I feel comfortable in the environment and will hopefully be able to help Justin understand some of the things that are going on.

I've seen this condition once before, but apparently it's pretty rare. I had a baby with it in the NICU in Rexburg when I was only a few months out of nursing school. A co-worker said she'd been a nurse for 25 years and had never actually seen one. Because we were in a small hospital in a small town, we had to life-flight the baby to Salt Lake City for emergency treatment.

So, for now we're counting our blessings that we know ahead of time and will be able to be mentally, spiritually and physically/medically prepared. We'll keep everyone up to date as we learn more about his condition

WE'RE SO EXCITED TO BE HAVING A LITTLE BOY!!!!!