Thank God for random 3D ultrasounds... (Part II)

As the entire fam drove to the hospital Alison and I were overwhelmed with emotions. I truly believe that it was at this moment, being full of fear, that the prayers started to be felt. My fear quickly transformed into faith. I reached over to Alison to comfort her and assured her that God is in control of this girl's life. Not sure how to explain the difference, though fear did leave me make no mistake I was still concerned for my wife and unborn baby girl and was ready to do whatever necessary to help them. We were honestly not sure what we would meet at the hospital, but knowing clear and well what happens at the "Birth center" we were not ruling out the possibility of an emergency delivery. We arrived and it wasn't long before they had Alison under high tech ultrasound examining the baby's heart. They expected it was Super Ventricular Tachycardia (SVT) but after a few minutes they declared without a doubt that it was Atrial Flutter. The right atrium of the baby's heart was beating at 460 beats per minute (bpm) and the left ventricle was beating at 230 bpm. Normal is about 110-160 bpm, in sync of course. In addition to the atrial flutter, they noticed fluid collected in both the chest cavity and the abdomen (considered "hydrops"). The amount was significant, but not yet considered a critical amount and they would continue to monitor it closely. They then spelled out the various options and gave their recommendations. The recommended first step, which we agreed to, was to start Alison on a heart drug called Digoxin (aka "Dij")which would be then be passed onto the baby. A medicine used to treat heart failure being used on my perfectly healthy wife, yea a little tough to process that. I did receive a calming phone call from my step-mom though telling me how this drug has the chance of sending the mom into heart failure requiring them to bust out the paddles and shock her heart back into motion :) (in all seriousness, I loved having someone like her on the other end who knew all about this stuff I was being forced to learn about). So with all eyes on Alison and her monitors, she received the first dose of Dij. I spent the first night with one eye open watching Alison's monitors and listening closely to the heart monitor as they checked on the baby every hour. With the baby's heart in flutter still, the monitor they used did not pick up anything reliable - just a bunch of noise.

Thank God for random 3D ultrasounds...

What started as a typical day quickly changed into a day of anxiety, emotions, and tons of prayer. It began with me heading into the office for some meetings and Alison getting Kayla to school. We were scheduled for a complimentary 3D ultrasound with Alison's girl parts doctor at 12:30pm. Alison picked up Kayla for school and we met at Chic-fil-A for lunch before the appointment. It was a great day and we were all excited to go see our baby girl.

Up to this day everything had checked out great and baby was in perfect health. The sonographer who was doing the ultrasound is the same woman who has scanned both Kayla/Lydia in the past and is very good at what she does. What is usually a 2 second wave of her wand to find the face had obviously turned to look at something else (not the face). Very calmly, though unsettled, she left the room saying that she forgot to do something and would be right back. I sensed something was not quite right but could not gauge what it was. Was it our baby? Was it something wrong with the last baby she scanned and she still hadn't collected herself... Then she came back in the room, still unsettled, and announced to us that something was wrong. Turned out that she left the room to call Alison's doctor out of surgery in order to get him to assess and recommend. "The doctor is going to be meeting with you in a minute to discuss what is going on" but something was definitely wrong. Before directing us to the room - she gave her apologies and hugged Alison. Thus began the spiral of emotions. We then spoke briefly with the doctor who explained that something was wrong with the heart but further examination needed to take place at the main hospital to identify exactly what and the next course of action. The doctor would then go "verify a couple things", get a copy of our records for us to take, and then direct us but we would be going to the maternal fetal medicine unit. We waited a couple minutes longer for the doctor to return, both of us were anxious as you can imagine. The doctor returned to tell us "You are going to need to go directly to the Birth Center without stopping. Do not go home. Do not stop anywhere. Go directly there, someone will be standing there waiting for you when you walk in". A few swipes on the phone and a facebook post later friends from across the country and globe started praying for us and for the baby.