"One kidney is all a person needs"

So we had our follow-up anatomy scan today. The 'dilatation' which showed up in the previous scan turned out to be not in the renal pelvis but a collection of cysts in the kidney itself which haven't resolved themselves as Spud has grown. In fact the kidney has never developed properly so I guess it's more correct to say there's a collection of cysts instead of the kidney, rather than in the kidney.

It's called Multicystic Dysplastic Kidney or MCDK. In plain English, it means that Spud only has one healthy kidney. Here's the shortest useful description available on the web:

A multicystic dysplastic kidney is one that never developed properly and usually does not work at all. These kidneys often disappear on their own over the first few years of life. The main point, however, is that if the other kidney is normal, the child will have absolutely normal kidney function and should lead a normal life. One kidney is all a person needs.

There's a more detailed explanation available here. The best description I've found is on the UK's National Kidney Federation website, but they appear to limit access to within the UK itself, so here's a link to Google's cached version.

The important thing is that the left kidney is, in the words of the sonographer, 'perfect', and doing all the things it should, so they're not concerned about that one developing problems. The only other issue is that there's approximately a 50% chance that Spud will have some other kind of urological problem, but those are all relatively minor and correctable.

Spud is fine otherwise, growing well, and keeping me awake at night doing Tae Bo routines! Plus the placenta is starting to do its thing and move out of the way, it's currently 3cm clear of the birth canal (for those that means anything to!), although we will have to have further scans to check on its progress.