Beck's Little Sister

On Monday, January 25th, Brent and I went to the doctor's office for a 3:00pm sonogram to find out if we are having a boy or a girl in June. The lady doing our sonogram said the baby looked great and she's 99% positive that we are having a girl. While getting the sonogram, Dr. Nivens had to leave to deliver a baby and rather than wait, I decided to go back the next morning.

Tuesday morning, Beck and I hung out and watched cartoons until it was time for me to take him to Mrs. Linda's. (He loves watching Pinky Dinky Doo and Backyardigans.) When we got to Mrs. Linda's, I took off his jacket and Mr. Mark put some Pop Tarts on the table and Beck quickly sat down and started chowing down. My appointment was at 9:00 but didn't get called back until 9:15. The nurse weighed me (only gained 1 pound; yeah!) and my blood pressure was great. Then, Dr. Nivens came in and apologized for not being there yesterday and we talked about my nausea (down to 1 pill per day). After our short conversation, she measured my belly then wanted to check the baby's heart beat. There was no heart beat and I could tell she was getting a little concerned which got me really concerned. We went to the sonogram room and immediately I could see the very, very slow heart beat which really scared me. It was only 75 beats per minute; normal heart beat should be around 120-160bpm. She kept looking at the heart beat and it got up to 166bpm which was great but she couldn't explain the slow heart beat. She said a few scary things such as, "I've never seen this before", "sometimes the baby stops growing and the heart stops beating", etc. At this point, the fear has totally set in with me and she wanted me to see the specialist we had seen before for the Down Syndrome test. Brent met me at the specialist office and at this point I was in tears.

Dr. Zaretsky told us he does around 5,000 sonograms per year and has seen this many times. He looked at the heart beat, the blood flow in the heart and measured the baby's body parts and said she looks great. She even had hick-ups which was so fun to watch. He didn't explain why it happens but the good news is that Beck's little sister is doing great.