Hello everyone. I hope this is an okay group to ask. Let me introduce myself first.

I’m a 24 year old momma of 2 under 2. A July 2020, August 2021, and due July 2022 now. If this baby comes early I will have 3 under 2, if he comes on time I will have 3 under 2.5.

Both of my other children are healthy with no defects or abnormalities. I don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t have diabetes, nothing I can think of that would make me high risk for my children to have any type of birth defect.

I have been followed by MFM since 12 weeks for a number of other reasons such as hx of previous preterm birth before viability, septate uterus, uterine scarring, and close interval pregnancies. I have had ultrasounds every two weeks since 16 weeks and nothing abnormal was ever found. These scans were mostly to check my cervix length, but they did also do growth scans and quickly looked at the heart at each of these scans with nothing abnormal noted. However, at 33 weeks the doctor came in and informed us that although our baby looked great otherwise he was very concerned about heart asymmetry and I believe he mentioned arrhythmia as well. He told us he could not elaborate further as he himself was not sure what it meant (which struck me as odd since he is a specialist doctor) and would not be able to answer any of our questions. He just told us it absolutely was not normal and that he would refer us to a pediatric cardiologist.

I have that appointment scheduled but it’s 3 weeks from now and I cannot stop stressing about this. Part of me feels like maybe the specialist is wrong and doesn’t know what he’s talking about since they are only just now seeing this at 33 weeks when, from what I’ve read online, usually heart issues are diagnosed at your anatomy scan around 20 weeks.

I guess I’m just looking for your experiences. How late was your child diagnosed with a heart condition if they were diagnosed during pregnancy? Is it possible my specialist doctor is wrong and this could be a normal finding at this point in pregnancy? He did mention they have seen this on my previous scans but did not mention it until now because they were just now able to get better images of his heart and were concerned about these newer, more detailed images they got. I know I won’t have any real answers until my appointment with the heart specialist but I’m just a wreck over this news right now. I feel completely blindsided and I’m trying to hold on to hope that my specialist is wrong and baby is fine.

Heart Mommas