Fetal Echocardiogram

We dropped Zachary off at his former daycare, having been told that the fetal echocardiogram appointment could take upwards of two hours. While Zachary had been a good sport so far at all ultrasounds and doctor appointments, we were realistic about the limits of a three year old. Our old daycare was thrilled to have him for the morning, and were nice enough to not even charge us for his care.

Off to the high risk OB we went, nervous about what the echocardiogram may show. We had absorbed the reality of the hydrocephalus and the ramifications of what may come to be with that, but the thought that we may also be looking at potential heart issues, or more genetic issues was terrifying. We didn't know what we were up against. This is probably one of the most frustrating parts of an in utero hydrocephalus diagnosis. Until the baby is born, there is no way to know the level of brain damage you're looking at - from none to major.

A fetal echocardiogram is an ultrasound that looks very closely at the heart, measuring the important areas and watching the blood move through. It is pretty boring to watch (at least from my point of view) because I have no idea what I'm looking at most of the time anyway, and I really have no idea about the parts of the heart. Plus, it was incredibly long. They took a cursory look at the girl, proclaimed her perfect as usual and then moved onto our boy. His ventricles were measuring even larger at this point - around 20 mm. The good news was that his heart measured perfectly. All four chambers were perfect and the blood was moving very well.

At this appointment, the high risk doctor also told us that he was referring us to the pediatric neurosurgeon. He wanted us to have a prenatal appointment with the neurosurgeon so that we could learn about the shunt placement procedure and ask him any questions that we had - since he was the expert. Our high risk OB, while not new to the field, was new to the area and had researched the neurosurgeon and proclaimed him to be among the best he had ever worked with. The neurosurgeon had apparently placed shunts in infants as early as 27 weeks gestation (pre-maturely born of course). The OB office let us know that they would refer us to the neurosurgeon and we should expect a call to set up an appointment.