I think this is the second blog I have posted about our baby with a picture of a heart. Last time, I was excited that we had a fetal heartbeat, so I posted a picture of an anatomical heart. This time I posted a picture of a symbolic heart for several reasons.
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As many of you know, there have been some recent issues with our baby's heart rate. (She is due in August.) Up until last Wednesday, everything had been perfectly normal with her throughout my pregnancy. But at my routine OB appointment, the doctor noticed her heart rate was very fast, about 190 beats per minute (130-160 is normal). He sent me over to Maternal/Fetal medicine for an ultrasound and a consult. The Maternal/Fetal doctor noticed a slight arrythmia (called a PAC - ask Tyler what that stands for), but he said they are not uncommon, usually benign, and resolve at birth. At that point her heart rate was back to normal. But he did advise monitoring the baby's heart rate twice a week just for analysis. This all happened on Wednesday.
On Friday I went in for the first non-stress test (fetal heart monitoring), at which point her heart rate skyrocketed back up to 220 beats per minute. The doctor was out of town then, so his consulting partner gave instructions for me to go back to the hospital on Saturday for another non-stress test. At that point they let me go home.
Saturday afternoon Tyler came home from camp and we both went over to the hospital together. They monitored the baby's heart, which was in perfect range for about two minutes (140 beats/minute) and then raced back up to 220 beats/minute and stayed there all afternoon. (There is no good explanation as to why it does this.) None of the doctors seemed to know what to do with me since both my regular OB and the Maternal/Fetal doctor were out of town. The on-call physician decided to admit me. The baby's heart rate stayed at 220 from about 3:00pm until 11:00pm Saturday. They gave me steroid shots to mature the baby's lungs, just in case the unthinkable happened and she went into heart failure, then they strapped me to a monitor and put me in a bed. After my Dad and Tyler gave me a blessing, her heart rate finally dropped again to normal range during the night.
Sunday morning, her heart went back up again to 220 from about 6:00am until 11:00am. They were just about to give me medication to try and bring the rate down, when it suddenly dropped back to normal. I sat there all afternoon watching the numbers on the machine, praying they would stay down. They did. At 7:00pm last night, after 8 hours of a normal rate, they discharged me.
This morning I had a follow-up with the Maternal/Fetal doc (who is thankfully back in town). He did another ultrasound and the heart rate was normal, there was no evidence of fluid around the heart or skull (which they had been concerned about on Saturday), and he could see no flow issues or other structural concerns of any kind. YEAH! He did recommend we get a fetal echocardiogram (which we have to go to Salt Lake to do), just to rule out any other structural problems that he is unable to see with the ultrasound machine here. We are headed up tomorrow for that exam.
All in all, the point of this blog is two-fold. One to give all of you a history and update. And, more importantly, to thank you for praying for us through this whole ordeal. It may not yet be over, and even if the echo is clean (which I really expect it will be), I will still have to go in 3x per week for monitoring. But, I do believe that when her heart rate went back down on Sunday afternoon -- and stayed there -- it was in large part due to the prayers and concerns of all of our family and friends. Thank you so much! That is why I posted the picture of the symbolic heart -- because I feel very loved and cared for (and so does April).
Oh, and some good news did come out of this. We have now had approximately 5 ultrasounds that confirm that this baby is a girl (there was some doubt previously). Also, she is most likely going to be named April Evelyn Nelson, whenever she arrives, and that is how we have been referring to her. Hence the blog title.
Thank you all again for all your love and prayers. I will give another update when we get home from Salt Lake.
Love, Kristen
