Fetal heart echo and meeting with surgeon.

April 20th 2011: 17 weeks pregnant- Joe and I arrive at Children's Hospital at 9am to meet with a pediatric surgeon and a neonatologist to discuss putting Frankie's organs back into his belly once born. There is nothing they can do in utero, unfortunately. Thankfully, there are several different things that they can do once he is born. If there is a hole in the sac that covers his organs when he is born they have to do surgery immediately. If there isn't a hole in the sac then they can wait it out. It's not as big of an emergency then. The biggest concern isn't getting the organs back into the belly, it is closing up the hole and putting the abdominal wall back together. This can also be done with help from either all natural materials or man-made materials.


At 2pm the fetal heart echo begins. This takes a total of about 2.5 hours. Baby Frankie moves a ton and getting him to sit still long enough for them to look at everything they needed just took time and patience. Thankfully the tech was amazing! And she was OCD and always made sure to get the correct pictures and sounds of the veins and heart pumping. Once the tech got all the necessary things she needed, she left and had a talk with the pediatric cardiologist. This was the last big hurdle that Joe, Frankie and I had to overcome. Once we knew the results of this test, we knew if Frankie would make it or not. We were shaking when the doctor walked into the room. Baby Frankie's heart looks NORMAL! Holy cow, thank the good Lord above! Prayers do work! Joe and I were in shock. We just didn't think the chances of making it through all these tests was very high so we prepared ourselves for the worst. For once, we didn't have to deal with the worst. What's next? The doctors will do another fetal heart echo on baby Frankie in 3-4 weeks just to make sure that everything still looks the same since I am still fairly early in the pregnancy and his heart is very small. Once I'm around 20 weeks they will double check to make sure that everything is still okay. The cardiologist said she was very confident that there was nothing wrong with his heart. As for now, we are praying all stays the same and that this pregnancy continues to be as healthy as possible!