Hello again! We hope everyone is well, and if you happened to get some snow you enjoyed a nice snow day-Matt can't wait until he can take Abby and Roxy out for snowball fights! I have a quick update. We had our appointment at CHOP today, we were supposed to see the surgeon and the liver specialist but the appointments were messed up-of course nothings easy-so we saw the surgeon today and we go back on Friday for the other appointment. There isn't too much to report other than we got some more answers about the surgery. The Dr estimates he'll have to remove the tumor when Abby's between six months and one year, unless there are problems sooner. The tumor is definitely not affection Abby at all, since she continues to eat and is for sure growing(she was 6.13 last Wed, and was 7.3 today!) The bigger Abby can grow before the surgery the better, besides her being bigger and stronger, the longer we can wait the more stable the liver will be and the less difficult the surgery. The best case scenario is that while Abby continues to grow, the tumor will not and the liver and Abby will start to grow around it. If that is the case, the surgery will only entail removing a 'wedge' of the liver. If the tumor grows with the liver, they will have to remove more of it, which is still possible, it just makes the surgery more complicated. The liver is the only organ that can regenerate, so the tumor could certainly be in a worse spot! On Friday, Abby will have an ultrasound in the am and then we see the liver specialist after. That ultrasound will probably determine how long we can wait because Abby has grown so much since her last ultrasound in December, and they will really see how rapidly the tumor is growing. The plan is after the ultrasound on Friday, we go back to see the surgeon in two months, get another ultrasound and then he'll reassess everything. Abby will also need an MRI as we get closer to the surgery, if we can wait until she's big enough they can do the MRI as an out patient and we can go home the same day,(as opposed to her needing to be sedated and being small,we'll have to stay over night) so we're also hoping for that. The Dr told us the surgery is definitely not a common one, they don't often see newborns with tumors on their liver, but who knows when they would have found it if she hadn't been sick in the NICU. The recovery time shouldn't be too bad, depending on how old Abby is, a few days in the hospital at most. They will have to make a pretty big incision on her belly, poor thing! It was nice to finally talk to the surgeon and get answers to all the questions that we've been thinking of the past few months. We will definitely update everyone again after the ultrasound on Friday. I couldn't put up a post with out a few pics, so enjoy!!

sound asleep on daddy, catching flies....
sick of me taking pictures...

but I just can't help it!