Leuven surgery - Mixed news

Hello everyone,

Louise is now in Leuven hospital while I am staying at my Aunt in Brussels. Thursday was a day of examinations, a echo/ultrasound scan, an MRI and the 'usual' blood, blood pressure, etc.
We heard that the gap in the airway is about 5 millimeter, which is a lot. As you can understand we were very unhappy to hear this.

Despite the large blockage the doctors decided to operate anyway, because they were unsure what the blockage was, and wanted to try everything before giving up. The surgery lasted about 3,5 hours because they had to be very careful not to do any damage. The result was that they couldn't remove the blockage, but have taken a lot of fluid out of the baby's belly (350 ml). They also gave the baby more fluid to swim around in so it can move better and grow easily.

We hope that this will give the baby a better chance to reach an age and size were a successful exit procedure can be performed. So now it is back to waiting, and hoping that the baby will not accumulate fluid too quickly. The docotors may be able to take fluid out of his belly one more time, but these operations are not without risk.

So all in all not a fantastic result, but they have been able to help the baby a little bit. We hope to see our little man today on the echo screen, to see how he is doing. I'll let you know more after that.

Thijs