First Ultrasound

Posted on February 24, 2011 by William No Comments

On February 22, 2011 we went in for our first ultrasound. We were so excited to finally get to see the baby that Sarah had been feeling grow inside of her. The ultrasound started as anyone would have expected it to, the technician was pointing out all the structures of the baby, taking measurements, etc. We were amazed at how quickly the technician was able to locate and identify things and cracked a sarcastic joke to her about how there must be very little training required for  this.

My hat’s off to those couples that can wait until he/she comes out to learn the gender. We’re soooooo not those people. I would have been very disappointed if we would not have been able to find out the gender that day. As it turned out we were able to tell the sex of our little 9 ounce, 6 inch long baby. It was pretty obvious when the tech pointed at something…as opposed to nothing, it’s a boy!

The technician continued looking, measuring, etc. She kept coming back to the heart at different angles and different positions. She made Sarah go to the bathroom and looked at it again. The room got very quiet, the pointing out of structures stopped and the technician said “I can’t tell you about what I see, the doctor will discuss it with you afterwards.” Our hearts stopped, we hadn’t really noticed anything in the ultrasound, but this was our first baby, we barely knew what we were looking at. The ultrasound finished and we sat awaiting the doctor to tell us something.

The doctor came into the room and told us that the baby’s measurements were good, he’s very active, weight was right on track, heartbeat was good. Then it came… “because he was moving around so much, we were not able to get a good enough look at the heart. There could be a problem but we want to have another ultrasound to make sure. The problem that we are concerned with is called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.” Then she very briefly explained that it means the left ventricle is underdeveloped and would require surgery, most likely at Mott’s Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor (University of Michigan’s Hopspital). That’s honestly the extent of what she told us. Obviously she did it so we would not freak out since it was not confirmed. Although I understand her position, I wish she would have told us a little more. We did plenty of freaking out after about 10 minutes with our best friend Google. We tried to keep our spirits high and thought surely we could not be the 1 in 3000.

They scheduled another ultrasound with a different technician, different area, and different equipment. Six days later….