At 22 weeks we went in to our regularly scheduled ultrasound in hopes of finding out if the baby was another girl or a baby boy. I waited until 22 weeks because my mom wanted to be there and it's fun for her to find out when we do. Most people go in between 18-20 weeks, but we wanted to wait.
After discovering we're having a boy the doctor said there was a problem with his heart and a specialist would be in the room momentarily. Now, because we were at a children's hospital that is equipped to do just about everything, everything is right there. The specialist was in the room in 30 seconds trying to explain what the problem was. I was in shock and what he said wasn't making sense, he was using so many big words, just get to the bottom of it. The bottom of it was we caught this very early and it's very serious and we have to admit you in the hospital right now. Yikes. That's when my ears perked up, right now.
I immediately thanked the good Lord for his perfect timing. If we would have had the ultrasound weeks earlier we might not have caught the problem. We had my mom there to take charge of the girls so that was something we didn't have to think about. We had a ultrasound tech that was in tuned enough to catch the rapid heart rate.
Aparently the baby's heart rate was doubling normal heart rate and was being clocked at 310. Yikes, it's supposed to be half that. When the heart pumps so quickly the blood does not fill the chambers and fluid can back up in the body. Of course there can also be damage to the heart, even death. There were no problems, we caught this early enough. Praise God for our baby boy and praise God for His perfect timing. Five minutes later I was in the ER of Winnie Palmer Hospital, which is right down the hall from where the ultrasound occured. As Kevin and I sat there with the heart monitor on my belly we could hear the baby's heart rate race time and again. The machine couldn't register the heart rate it was going so fast. Scary.
After being admitted to the hospital, upstairs actually, and after about 12 hours baby boy's heart rate converted. Yeah! God is so good and this story of his loving hands taking care of my family is a testimony to that. I asked the doctor what would have happened if we had had our ultrasound weeks earlier and the SVT had not presented itself at that time. He said I would have eventually noticed less or no movement from the baby and gone into the doctor. That would have been devastating.
Thank you Lord for sparing us and taking care of my son, actually he's your son.
