Well, I feel no need to rehash or go into more detail about the past few days I briefly described. I've vented about it, and can now be done being bummed. I don't want to continue replaying it. My first two days back at work were a little rough, but I think I'm getting better. Against all my better nursing judgement, I decided Tuesday night to quit taking my "extra" medications and go back to just Dig (well not against all my nursing judgement, I used it very carefully and decided this would be fine). They were all either extra precautions (antibiotics) or treating symptoms my extra precaution meds (phenergan for nausea the antibiotics caused). It's now been a little over 24 hours without the extras and I feel about 50% better. So maybe back to normal in another day? I hope so.
Our doctor visits have been spaced out to weekly. And since today's visit was perfect, next week we'll probably get to go to every 2 weeks (if everything still looks good). At that point in pregnancy, you usually start going to doctor visits every 2 weeks anyways, I'll just have an ultrasound to go with it. It really doesn't get old seeing lil' guy this often. He's always doing some new trick. Today he was munching on his first and then literally did the baby "bye-bye"-style wave. The ultrasound lady was cracking up at that. She kept cycling through those few seconds for quite a while until she pulled her professional self back together. So obviously, no SVT and no signs of heart failure (we would only expect to see heart failure if he relaunched into a significant amout SVT like he was doing before.) Yay for Dig working and helping lil' guy out!
I get asked a lot: what's the cause? will it continue when he's born? will he need medications when he's born? The short answers: dunno, maybe, depends. The cause is most likely ideopathic, meaning we have no reason to think anything caused it at all; that it just happened. His heart is structurally normal. He will probably have an EKG of his own when he's born to trace the electrical patterns of his heart, and check for abnormal or extra electrical pathways. Sometimes an extra pathway can cause SVT. It may or may not continue, we'll just have to wait and see what happens when he gets here and the Dig wears out of his system. Our perinatologists have said that just labor and delivery could possibly keep him out of it for good (babies heart function/flow change a little during the first few weeks of life, I'm not explaining all of it, but it's the difference between depending on mom and depending on your own heart and lungs). If he never has SVT after the medication wears off, then we're done with it all and will call it history. Or it could possibly continue. If it does continue, they will start him back on medications and if that controls it, then we'll watch him closely as he grows. They usually will grow out of it. Then again, it becomes history. Worse case scenario, it's poorly controlled with medications, then he can have a catheter ablation (an invasive procedure used to remove a faulty electrical pathway from the hearts of those who are prone to developing cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, supraventricular tachycardias (SVT) and Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Catheter ablation is usually performed by an electrophysiologist (a specially trained cardiologist) in a cath lab. It involves advancing several flexible catheters into the patient's blood vessels, usually in the femoral vein. The catheters are then advanced towards the heart and high-frequency electrical impulses are used to induce the arrhythmia, and then ablate (destroy) the abnormal tissue that is causing it. Catheter ablation of most arrhythmias has an extremely high success rate. Success rates for WPW syndrome have been as high as 95%. For SVT and atrial flutter, the success rates are 95-98%.---- thank you Wikipedia) and again it's history. In every scenario, it is a treatable condition that can be fixed. My assumption is that it happened for no reason, will most likely never have it again once he's born or it will be easily controlled with a medication such as Digoxin, and he'll just grow out of it.
Next Thursday (April 19th) we'll have another ultrasound and our 26 week OB appointment. More to come then. Since I was feeling totally poopy over the weekend, we didn't get out usual Sunday picture but here are some of baby to make up for it :)
Our doctor visits have been spaced out to weekly. And since today's visit was perfect, next week we'll probably get to go to every 2 weeks (if everything still looks good). At that point in pregnancy, you usually start going to doctor visits every 2 weeks anyways, I'll just have an ultrasound to go with it. It really doesn't get old seeing lil' guy this often. He's always doing some new trick. Today he was munching on his first and then literally did the baby "bye-bye"-style wave. The ultrasound lady was cracking up at that. She kept cycling through those few seconds for quite a while until she pulled her professional self back together. So obviously, no SVT and no signs of heart failure (we would only expect to see heart failure if he relaunched into a significant amout SVT like he was doing before.) Yay for Dig working and helping lil' guy out!
I get asked a lot: what's the cause? will it continue when he's born? will he need medications when he's born? The short answers: dunno, maybe, depends. The cause is most likely ideopathic, meaning we have no reason to think anything caused it at all; that it just happened. His heart is structurally normal. He will probably have an EKG of his own when he's born to trace the electrical patterns of his heart, and check for abnormal or extra electrical pathways. Sometimes an extra pathway can cause SVT. It may or may not continue, we'll just have to wait and see what happens when he gets here and the Dig wears out of his system. Our perinatologists have said that just labor and delivery could possibly keep him out of it for good (babies heart function/flow change a little during the first few weeks of life, I'm not explaining all of it, but it's the difference between depending on mom and depending on your own heart and lungs). If he never has SVT after the medication wears off, then we're done with it all and will call it history. Or it could possibly continue. If it does continue, they will start him back on medications and if that controls it, then we'll watch him closely as he grows. They usually will grow out of it. Then again, it becomes history. Worse case scenario, it's poorly controlled with medications, then he can have a catheter ablation (an invasive procedure used to remove a faulty electrical pathway from the hearts of those who are prone to developing cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, supraventricular tachycardias (SVT) and Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Catheter ablation is usually performed by an electrophysiologist (a specially trained cardiologist) in a cath lab. It involves advancing several flexible catheters into the patient's blood vessels, usually in the femoral vein. The catheters are then advanced towards the heart and high-frequency electrical impulses are used to induce the arrhythmia, and then ablate (destroy) the abnormal tissue that is causing it. Catheter ablation of most arrhythmias has an extremely high success rate. Success rates for WPW syndrome have been as high as 95%. For SVT and atrial flutter, the success rates are 95-98%.---- thank you Wikipedia) and again it's history. In every scenario, it is a treatable condition that can be fixed. My assumption is that it happened for no reason, will most likely never have it again once he's born or it will be easily controlled with a medication such as Digoxin, and he'll just grow out of it.
Next Thursday (April 19th) we'll have another ultrasound and our 26 week OB appointment. More to come then. Since I was feeling totally poopy over the weekend, we didn't get out usual Sunday picture but here are some of baby to make up for it :)
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| He's either keeping secrets or picking his nose. You decide. |
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| Yes, another profile picture. We have loads. |
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| Use a little imagination here- baby boy facing left with blurry fist by nose/mouth. |
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| Finally got around to getting a little photo album for all these US pics we're getting. It holds 52 photos.... and yet I'm already running out of space. |
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