Look, it’s baby Lydie and her heart!! ❤️
I think every mother who has ever gone in for the 20 week anatomy ultrasound knows the intense emotions that come from seeing your little baby pop up on the screen—a living, beautiful, individual person. And if you’re like me, in those moments you are half in awe and half praying/anxiously waiting to hear medical confirmation that everything is “all right.” Congenital heart defects are present before birth as they occur when the heart is first being formed—but they’re not always found in these prenatal screenings. In fact, some people with CHDs (depending on the severity) may not find out for many years—if ever—that they have one!
At our first ultrasound, the tech noticed that Lydia was measuring small, but saw little else to raise concern. We agreed to watch her growth for a couple weeks and come back for another scan. At the second appointment she was still measuring small so they referred us to some specialists. Around this time I started worrying and googling as mothers do. I was so worried that I pulled out my first son’s ultrasound measurements to compare, as he had also been small. Their measurements matched almost perfectly. As my son is now a perfectly healthy & happy school-age child, this was very comforting to me! And sure enough, when those specialists looked her over—two different doctors on two different occasions; one just a month before she was born—they could find nothing wrong. “She looks great!” They told me, and each specifically mentioned her beautiful heart. In retrospect it is a testament to how difficult an ultrasound of a heart smaller than a strawberry can be to read, as all four ultrasounds failed to show any one of her four congenital heart defects. We went through the rest of our pregnancy blissfully unaware of just how special our baby girl was going to be. #misslydiefaith#chdawareness #heartwarrior
