Fetal Echo Sonogram - AND - More Pics of You!!!!!

I'll start off with the wonderful pics of you!

Your adorable profile pic at 22 weeks 2 days - you always seem to be looking up at the "light" above!  I wonder what you are seeing in there!

3D pic of you - hands to your face which is what you seem to like lately!  Your Daddy and Sis (Kyndall) think that your mouth, cheeks and nose look like me already!

We went in for a check of your heart and we got a few extras on the side!  She even measured you again and you weighed 1 pound, 4 ounces!  That's the weight of a 20 oz bottle of water!  Your Daddy and I picked a bottle of water up tonight to see how heavy it felt and it was kind of crazy that you were that heavy in my belly!  I thought your weight was a little high for 22 weeks, but the doc looked at the percentile growth charts and you are at 54%, which is right in the middle!  So nice to hear for this diabetic mama of yours!  You had your hands to your face the whole time - your hands were either in praying position (I guess God is already answering MY prayers for you!), you were sucking on your thumb or arm, or your hands were to your face in general.  It seems that you are really exploring and experimenting with your sense of touch and taste right now!

There was only one slightly "off" thing that happened.  The doctor came in to do his normal check after the tech did hers (and this was after 20 mins each of studying your little heart beating - in super slow motion, with red and blue colors of your blood going in and out of your heart and everything in between!)...and when he was through he said everything looked good, just couldn't get a final view that he wanted, but as he was saying that, he did see the angle a bit better.  He then said the tech had just a little question about a spot on the heart that could be a hole (yes, a hole...Mommy started freaking out in her own mind right about here!), but the doc couldn't see a hole and he thought you had a healthy, normal heart.  Whew!  But, he still threw out the word "hole" and talking about your little heart!  So, I asked a few questions, like, what would that mean if you did have a hole in your heart (yikes, still sounds crazy to me!)...and he said that it would most likely not be there by the time you were born...and if it was, would most likely heal itself after birth.  Double whew!  He then said again, you have a healthy, normal heart.  Triple whew!  I know that docs have to be extra careful, as do the techs, especially with high risk patients like me.  So this is standard and normal, I'm sure.

I belong to a website called Babycenter.com and there is an ultrasound tech (for a high-risk pregnancy doc even) on one of the boards that answers a lot of questions (and even double-confirmed that your gender pictures were indeed absolutley "girly" once we found that new information out a few weeks back!).  Anyway, I told her all about what happened today and asked for her perspective on this whole hole-in-the-heart fetal echo sonogram find...and what it would mean to her...especially after our doc said you had a healthy heart in the end.  Here is here response (and this is being posted mainly so your Mommy can go back and look at this for reassurance as often as she wants!):

"Don't worry another second about your exam...if possible. The heart is VERY difficult to image...very! It can be close to impossible to fully evaluate it in many cases. There are times when we think we see an abnromality but then it can't be reproduced. The law in ultrasound is that we must be able to reproduce something over and over to prove that it is real. There is so much that goes into making an ultrasound look the way it does. We can get fooled by a lot of things. These cardiac defects can be very very hard to detect as well. Sometimes us sonographers are overly cautious and think we see things when in fact after the doc checks things out everything is normal.

It is routine in the office I last worked in (a perinatologist) that he came in and either watched us scanned or scanned himself on every patient....so the fact that the doc came in and looked doesn't mean there is a problem. Also, the heart is better evaluated in live mode so looking at the still images we get gives the docs little info. Sometimes they like to see the live action shot for themselves. Again...doesn't mean there is an issue just means that the doc is a good doctor and thorough!

Trust your doc. He wouldn't tell you things look normal if he had the slightest suspect that something was wrong! They are very cautious when it comes to the fetal heart. The liability is just too high for them.

Don't worry about what ifs....theres no what ifs here! Your baby's heart is healthy!"

A millions "WHEW's!" after I read that!  She is so nice...and I am so thankful to have her give her time to use her expertise on worried mama's like me!

All that to say...I am not spending another thought on any hole's in your heart.  Okay, it may creep in my mind every so often, but I'll shoo it quickly away with the nice ultrasound tech's words she wrote!  They'll keep checking up on you at the doc's office anyway, so no need for me to worry for nothing!

On an extremely COOL note - your Daddy felt you last night with that SUPER hard kick you gave.  We LOVED it.  I feel you a lot now - even when I am sitting in the car driving sometimes - so I am loving every minute of it as well and getting used to this new feeling.  By the way, that was ice cream I ate tonight that you seemed to really be estatic about!  You are already Mommy's kind of girl!  =)  Love you AJ!