Peeper Report: Perfect Heart Edition

Peeper had an ultrasound, including echocardiogram, today and everything seems to be just fine in there!

The cardiologist checked out her heart in great detail and said that it looks great.

She did talk to us a bit about the kinds of cardiac issues that can develop with any baby at delivery, if the plumbing changes required to make the switch from cord breathing to air breathing don't go smoothly, and said that if there were a tiny defect it might not show up on the ultrasound (her heart is about the size of a penny now) but that's all just CYA stuff.

One funny thing is that the cardiologist is a very young woman, which kind of surprised us.

Later, Shrike said, "That's not what a cardiologist is supposed to look like. They're supposed to look like your dad!"

(I didn't realize that "pediatric cardiologist" meant that the doctor would be a child!)

Dr. Peri was also very pleased with everything that he saw, including Peeper's growth.

I forgot to ask about a current estimated weight, or what gestational age her size equates to (I might give them a call tomorrow to ask about that) but the important thing is that her overall size is at about the 26th percentile.

Her femur length is less than 5th percentile, but he's not worried about that; he's still saying that she's just built like Shrike.

He specifically said that he's reassured by the fact that her abdominal circumference is around 26th percentile, same as her overall measurement.

He said that if that were very low, he "might be worried about a placental problem, rather than just being small like mom, but I'm not."

The previous measurements weren't converted to percentiles, so we couldn't compare that, but he showed us the growth-curve with her measurements plotted on it, and she's growing at the right rate, just on the small side of average.

In other words, her curve is "parallel" to the theoretical growth curve, just a bit lower on the Y-axis.

He said that he expects her to continue to grow at about the same rate and stay around the 25th percentile or so.

(Although, of course, we'll be watching closely to make sure.)

I asked what a 25th percentile full-term baby weighs, and he said that he'd expect "around 6 3/4 - 7 pounds."

Well, hell, that's a quite respectable-sized baby.

Before we left, I scheduled appointments for more ultrasounds at 28 weeks (3 weeks from now), 31 weeks and 33 weeks. After that, he'll want to see me every week until I deliver.

That's going to be a lot of driving, and a lot of schedule adjusting (especially since my OBs office will be seeing me weekly at that point, too!) but we'll do what we have to do to keep an eye on her and make sure that all continues to go well in there.

No 3D photos today, but a couple of pretty good 2Ds (or what would be considered good ones if we hadn't been spoiled by that 3D last month!)