Neonatalcardio ultrasound

Ya, the title is a big word for me to write, but it's the only announcement I really have and didn't know how to title this. On Tuesday the 17th (so ya a week ago, I'm behind).

Just as a background, even though I'm sure everyone already knows, Kyle has had four open heart surgeries for a few different things (pulmonary atresia, hypoplasty right heart syndrome, had a enlarged heart, and a few other things that were either caused from or linked to the other things. Ya, I've done a lot of research, good thing I like things to do with health.) Anyway because of all of this, our doctor told us he wanted us to go see a doctor in Salt Lake that could do a specialized ultrasound of our baby's heart. The reason for this was first of all, because our doctor wanted to know, and secondly, because if she has any of the same conditions as Kyle, we would not be able to have our baby in Logan and would have to go to Salt Lake. Even though there is no evidence that any of his conditions are hereditary, there is also very little evidence that it isn't hereditary. In fact, they don't really know what causes these conditions.

Now away from all that stuff, on Tuesday, we had to go to Primary Children's Hospital to visit with a neonatalcardiologist and have the ultrasound. Kyle was calm throughout this which was a good, because I have been extremely nervous about it. Even though I knew how rare the conditions were, I have still been freaked out that something would be wrong. We sat in the waiting room for about 30 minutes and with each minute I was getting more and more nervous, letting my mind run away with what if's.

Finally someone brought us into a room to do the ultrasound. As I lay there and watched her trying to find the heart, my mind continued to freak out. Finally after chasing her around for a while, the ultrasound tech was able to find her heart and zoom in on it. She took a long time and a lot of pictures of different angles of the baby's heart. She would talk to us, but said she wasn't allowed to really tell us anything about the findings in the heart. Ya, that was not so comforting to me. Finally she said that she got pictures of every part that she needed and went to get the doctor. He came in and looked through all the pictures, and re-looked at some.

He said that there was nothing he could see that was wrong. Thank heaven. He said that just as a side note, that doesn't mean there isn't anything however. Because some of Kyle's conditions have to do with the pulmonary valve, he said that some things won't be possible to detect until after she is born because right now my heart and lungs are doing everything for her, but he doesn't feel that we have any reason to be concerned about that.

He then asked us if we wanted to be involved in a special study that Primary Children's was doing with U of U about heart development and heart defect detection. By doing this they took 3D pictures of the baby's heart. He said that the type of ultrasound he was doing would not harm her in any way (I was a little leery because I've heard so many things about 3D ultrasounds) and that it wasn't the same type of 3D ultrasound that is used in shopping malls. It was actually pretty cool to see all the parts of her heart.

Anyway to make a long story short, in spite of my freaking out, everything is looking fine and I'm not as worried. I'm just happy for technology these days, and the ability for doctors to find things sooner and before birth. Everything right now is feeling normal to me (although I don't recall having braxton hicks at all with Braxton) and she is an active little girl.