All Better Now!

Today was Peeper's annual biannual check-up with the cardiologist and it went great!

Not only did everything look and sound just perfect, but she was also incredibly cooperative and lay perfectly still for her echocardiogram.

Which, by the way, she knows how to say. The sonographer was quite impressed.

That sonographer was not one the same one who did her echo last year, but she's actually the one who did her very first (postnatal) echo, when she was five days old. She couldn't get over how much she's grown. Nor can we.

When the doctor was checking her out, I asked her to "tell Doctor about your scar" which (with the tiniest bit of prompting) goes something like this:

"When I was a baby, I had two holes in my heart. Then I had an operation, and I'm all better now."

His response was, "You are all better, honey!"

And, best of all, we don't have to go back for two years!

We told him about our baby #2 plans and asked whether we should be concerned about the possibility of a full sibling of Peeper's also having cardiac issues.

He said not especially, but that it would probably be a good idea for Shrike to be followed by a perinatalogist (which she will be anyway, although hopefully not as closely and Peeper and I were!) and to have a fetal echo about midway through the pregnancy, attended by both the perinatologist and a pediatric cardiologist who specializes in such things (not him, but his partner).

Of course, Peeper had one of those at twenty-five weeks, and it told us we were in the clear, but even though we won't believe an "all okay" report, at least it would be good to know that there are no huge glaring concerns.

Interestingly, he said that Peeper's ASD (the upper hole) was quite small and those are hard to diagnose prenatally, but that her VSD (the lower hole) was "quite large" and he seemed to be surprised that it wasn't diagnosed.

In retrospect, though, I am very glad that it wasn't, because as much of a basket case as I was all the way through my pregnancy, I can't imagine how much worse I might have been if I'd know that.

Anyway, he specifically recommended that we go with the perinatalogists from CapitalCity who opened an office in OurTown about a year ago, because they work pretty closely with them.

(This is the doctor that DoulaK saw when she was pregnant with BabyK. I think they opened the office here in time for her last appointment. We were already planning to go with them, because it will be much more convenient than the one we saw before.)

Of course, we have to get that baby made, first.

But in the meantime, the baby we do have has a perfect heart!