Maternal-Fetal Care Specialist

Thursday Andy and I met with Dr. Higby, a specialist for high risk pregnancies. Don't freak, we are not high risk. Andy's family has had some heart conditions, so Dr. DeLaGarza (our OBGYN) felt we should meet with Dr. Higby to have him take a look at Lyla's heart. The fun part, we got to see Lyla again. Andy's uncle had a heart murmur that he had surgery on in his late forties and two of Andy's cousins have had Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (a complicated, but not life-threatening heart condition). Unfortunately, he could not detect either heart conditions through ultrasound, so at this point he has given Lyla a clean bill of health. The only thing he found was a calcification on her heart. This is found in about 3-4% of all pregnancies and is a marker for Downs Syndrome. Out of the four markers he could have found through ultrasound, he only found this one. This gives us a strong hope and confidence that Lyla will be just fine. Basically we have 1/400-1/1600 chance of Lyla being born with Downs. Looking at my age and the one marker that was found, he narrowed it down to a 1/575 chance, but still nothing to be concerned about.

If Lyla is born without Downs, the calcification will not affect her development or her heart in any way. He says there are many theories as to why these calcifications develop, but no sound reason at this point. I feel very confident that she is going to be just fine. Andy was a little bummed by the news. I think it shook him more than me. We talked and I told him not to worry, that we just need to have faith and continue to pray for a healthy baby girl. My sweet husband just doesn't like any bad news.

Other than that, we are doing well. Lyla is growing and moving all the time now. Her movements are getting stronger so Andy can feel them more often and we can even see them. We still don't see body parts, but after our latest ultrasound I know how she is positioned so I can guess when it's her arms or her legs based on where I feel the movement. I think her favorite game is beat up on mommy's bladder. I can't believe that we are 17 weeks away from her arrival. I know that is still 4 months away, but 17 weeks doesn't sound like a lot of time. We will be getting her furniture at the end of January. We are both very excited to start putting the nursery together.


Lyla's latest ultrasound. 22 weeks and 4 days. It looks like she is sucking her thumb.