Week 24

My weekly appointment with Dr. Brown was November 18, 2011. They started measuring me and I was measuring 29 centimeters, which would mean I was measuring 29 weeks along, when I was actually only 24 weeks and three days at the time. Dr. Brown said that’s to be expected with how much extra fluid and swelling there is, but it was a little surprising to realize I was measuring about 5 weeks ahead.

The rest of the week was pretty quiet except we did go down to my parent’s house Thursday evening, November 10, 2011, to celebrate my brother Koltyr’s birthday! It was a lot of fun to see family and to eat cake and ice cream! Its always nice to have something to celebrate.

On November 11, 2011, Scott and I got up nice and early and headed to Primary Children’s Medical Center for Baby’s Echocardiogram. I’d never been there before, so it was different going to an appointment where they have play places and Xbox 360’s in the waiting room for the kids. I say for the kids, but it attracted far more dad’s than children – even Scott hahah. He thinks every doctor’s office needs to have an Xbox 360 in their waiting rooms! I had to agree. It sure puts the dad’s at ease.

The exam itself was fairly simple – I laid on a bed while the tech took lots and lots of ultrasound scans of Baby’s heart. It took around 30-45 minutes I believe. Poor Scott got extremely tired sitting in the dark room and nearly fell asleep. Even though I was on a nice, hard bed, I was far too uncomfortable to even think about sleeping. I had to flip onto my side eventually because my back started to hurt and I got really lightheaded. But it was amazing to see his heart up close and to watch the tech push the buttons that brought up the different colors indicating blood flow and everything. I’m awed by what technology we have nowadays. And his heart rate was in the 160 range the entire time – which was great!

After the ultrasound, we met with a fetal cardiologist – Dr. Pinto. Yes like the bean. And she told us she couldn’t find any defects. As far as she could tell, his heart was perfectly normal other than some enlargement on the right side, but that was due to the fluid putting pressure on his heart. Of course it was a small structure and there could be some oddities they might not spot until he’s older, but that was good news. She said she couldn’t see anything that alarmed her at that point – everything was functioning as it should. They wanted to see us again for another fetal-echo to see if anything had changed and to see how his heart was holding up under the pressure. They were basically watching for heart failure. Which broke my heart. We set up an appointment for four weeks later – December 9, 2011 – and left feeling slightly hopeful that we had at least another 4 weeks with our little man.

24 Weeks, 2 Days