My 3D Baby

Yesterday was the echocardiogram and another growth and anatomy scan looking specifically at our daughter's heart. This was a good visit. In fact, it was a great visit! The echocardiogram went very well. The doctor saw nothing abnormal with her heart at all. Dave and I were expecting this as the other scans revealed nothing wrong with her heart, but it feels so good to know that right now her heart is in perfect fetal working order! The doctor did remind us that pulmonic stenosis (what we are looking for) can occur late in pregnancy and sometimes even right after birth. For this reason, he does want an echo done on her shortly after birth to make sure that everything still looks good. Fortunately, even if something did develop yet it would be a very small and fixable issue.

Her kidneys, while good news, are also still a little more of a concern. The scan showed that her kidneys are over the 9oth percentile in size, BUT they appear to be functioning just fine. This is great news! There is nothing else abnormal in appearance about them other than they are just so large. Due to their size they will continue to monitor me and baby for the duration of the pregnancy and we return in six weeks to check on them again and make sure that they are still functioning and look okay. And, again, she will have a scan done right after birth to recheck their function at that time as well. And for all we know, VHL patients may actually have larger kidneys while still in the womb but with relatively few numbers of VHL patients diagnosed before birth and the continued advances in fetal technology no one will know this for a while yet.

For all intensive purposes we have a happy, healthy baby girl right now. She is safe and secure inside her mommy and apart from some basic procedures immediately following birth we hope and truly believe that she will have a normal infancy.

I also got to experience a 3D ultrasound (or, I guess they call it 4D). This was such a neat experience! And it was kind of a relief to know that my baby isn't flat. She won't need to be inflated after birth! :-)

The picture, while blurry, is her face with her arm extending in front of it. And because several of you like those pregnancy shots here is another one of those as well!

Our beautiful baby girl looking "plump" and round!