Well, the beginning was actually 22 weeks and 4 days ago (by ultrasound) and of course we couldn't be more excited that just 2 weeks after Valentine's day we would have a brand new addition to cuddle with the rest of the winter!!
Our formal 20 week ultrasound was on October 3rd, 3 days before we were leaving for NYC to visit uncle Cody. Baby Newman proudly displayed right away that he was in fact a little guy. He seems already to have a great personality, even giving a thumbs up before he would hold still to gather his stats. Head circumference, femur length, kidneys, stomach and bladder all looked great -seemed odd though that the tech kept skipping over his heart. She pulled up the doppler to get the HR (fine of course) but moved away again, then, of course he rolled over one more time and she told us "maybe you'll have to come back for a second scan." No way. So more scanning...I was just trying to count the chambers - 4 - but something looked off. What do we know though - most doctors can identify that something is in fact fluid, a kidney or a baby on an ultrasound and that's about the extent.
So, we waited for the perinatologist. Same thing, skipping around over the same checklist, then spending WAY too long on the heart. As he was labeling you could see the left ventricle was much smaller than the right, but it was there. We knew something was really wrong then but not sure exactly what -- he finally something to the effect of there is definitely something wrong with the heart. We were taken to another room and waited a few more minutes. Then he came back in and handed us a piece of paper with an order for a fetal ECHO with below that written the diagnosis: hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
It goes without saying that you can't even begin to fathom hearing something like that...not even if you are the most paranoid of pregnant women (who may have already rented a doppler to check your baby's heart rate independently of the OB), and once you hear it you certainly can't believe it. We spent the rest of the day October 3rd with Addy at Loose park being more thankful than ever that we have such a perfectly wonderful and healthy daughter but so devastated that our baby boy had essentially a broken heart and we could do nothing but wait...
