Pictures of the twins and baby B's cystic hygroma and hydrops

I've been having weekly follow up ultrasounds since we got back from Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Mainly, we're tracking baby B and how her cystic hygroma and hydrop fluid levels are. It's a tricky thing to measure, given that babies move and they aren't always on an equal plane. So we've discussed how to get the most accurate standardized measurements and I think this week is the first time that each of the medical teams can get a comparison reading from the images.

From what my Perinatologist has noted, the fluid levels have pretty much stabilized in baby B. Of course I'm hoping for the levels to go down and start to resolve completely, but at least they don't seem to continue to significantly increase.

I know it's hard for someone that isn't trained to read ultrasound images to see where baby B is impacted, so I added arrows to the area where the fluid is abnormal. If you compare to baby A, which is the next picture, you can clearly see that baby B looks puffy and swollen. This is due to the skin edema as well. The arrows below her body show where the cystic hygroma is located. It almost looks like she's resting on a pillow. The arrows inside her stomach area is where the most obvious hydrops are. The shorter arrows are the skin edema.

Baby A (below) continues to bully her sister inside the womb. Good thing there is a membrane separating these two, or I'd fear for baby B even more. Baby A is very active and likes to punch and kick her sister, push her into the corner and lay right next to her. I've been telling her to take it easy in there, for her sister's sake.

I have two more ultrasounds for the next 2 weeks to continue to monitor things. Both babies are still growing on track developmentally, and both have normal amounts of amniotic fluid. While baby B has a slightly higher heart rate than baby A, both are within normal range. So it looks like, for now, we are on target to go back to Cincinnati at the beginning of September to have the vascular structure of the placenta worked on, so that both these babies will be able to operate independently of each other.