Worry

I have been super paranoid this entire pregnancy.  Obviously, my road to parenthood has not been easy.  I worry constantly because lets face it, we have had a lot of heartache.  Throughout this pregnancy I have had this constant feeling that something will go wrong.  So far all of the issues have been "me" related.  I can handle issues with me such as fibroid degeneration and contractions.  The baby has always been great.  Absolutely perfect...until now.

I am not going to go on and on about what happened because to be quite frank, I am tired.  The short of it is that after having very little fetal movement for 3 days, I whipped out my home doppler Tuesday morning to give myself that extra reassurance until my weekly NST on Wednesday.  Something didn't sound right.  The baby's heart rate kept stopping.  I changed the batteries in the doppler, shook it, checked my own heart rate, and checked the baby's heart rate again.  Thump, thump, thump, thump (silence), thump, thump (silence), thump.....My heart began racing and I decided to just finish getting ready for work.  I drank 2 big glasses of juice in hopes that the baby would wake up before work.  I would feel better if she just would start moving.  In the meantime I called to get in to my doctor ASAP.

The NST on Tuesday did not go well and neither did the one on Wednesday.  After seeking opinions out from THREE different doctors, the doctors agreed that our baby has developed arrhythmia.  The weird thing is that most arrhythmia's are discovered in the second trimester because the heart is still immature and by the third trimester or shortly after birth, the arrhythmia goes away.  In my instance, the arrhythmia did not start until after 37 weeks.  Needless to say this is not normal.  About 1-2% of all pregnancies an arrhythmia is discovered, but the majority of these are arrhythmia's that developed in the second trimester and are gone before delivery.  So I again find myself in that lonely category of not being in the majority.  It is a terrifying place to be.

I have to see a cardiologist at Children's Memorial Hospital on Friday.  I have no idea how I am going to make it until then.  I love this baby more than anything.  I am a complete mess.  I know everything can be perfectly okay.  But I can't help but feel this overwhelming feeling that something really is wrong.  And if the baby's heart structure is okay, then I may have to go through testing for such things as lupus, thyroid disease, and infections.  I am just scared.  Please pray for us that everything is okay....