I really need to find the time to write out the whole birth story and our experience in the hospital… Paul kept good notes for me of what went on so I can construct it from memory and notes, but there just doesn’t seem to be time to sit down and write it out! (I’m writing this while pumping, thanks to my hands-free bustier thingie.)

As some of you may know, I was born with a birth defect in my heart. (A Ventricular Septal Defect, or VSD to be precise.) Because of this, and the fact that I was on an ACE inhibitor when I got pregnant, Dr. Schwartz ordered that a fetal echocardiogram be done while I was pregnant (remember? I talked about it.) which necessitated a follow up echo before we left the hospital.

The echo was done on day 2, I think. A tech came to the room with the machines and did the tests on Kieran there in the room. She didn’t tell us anything, but said that the cardiologist would come talk to us the next day after he reviewed the results. The cardiologist did come chat with us and explained that while Kieran definitely doesn’t have the birth defect that I was born with (WHEW!) that there was a murmur and a thing or two that wasn’t 100% on the echo. Basically it’s nothing to be worried about, just little flaps inside his heart that hadn’t closed all the way when his heart and lungs kicked into gear, and a “bypass” that hadn’t closed itself off as expected.

So today was the 1 month follow-up to the hospital echo to see if things had healed up like they should. The answer is a qualified “yes” on all accounts. Things are healing, but they’re not *healed* yet. The murmur is still there. The holes and latent byways are still there, but smaller. The cardiologist says there’s nothing to worry about at this point, that this is all very common and that things *are* healing up, so there’s no reason to think that they won’t continue to heal. The Pulmonary Artery is a little narrower than he’d like to see, but he says that he sees it all the time and usually they strengthen and widen out on their own. (I don’t have my notes at hand while I’m pumping here… otherwise I’d give the technical terms.)

We have an appointment to return in three months (Nov 16) to make sure everything has healed up the way it should. Until then, we’re not worrying about anything. Kieran isn’t showing any signs that these little issues are bothering him, he’s gaining weight like a champ and is cute as hell: so life is good.

On a side note: it was nifty to see ultrasounds of Kieran from the OUTSIDE. :)