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This morning I got a heart monitor put on, and I'll be wearing it for a month. My doc would have preferred a week, but I guess it was either a day or a month--strange. At any rate I can take it off to sleep and shower, so that's good.
I have a heart rate/rhythm problem that only crops up when I'm pregnant, at least so far. I had it with my son and was just on meds for it. I figured it was just the same routine this time around but it seems worse, so they're going to check it out with a heart monitor that I take home (aka Holter monitor) and then they will keep an eye on the readings. I hope to meet with a cardiologist within about a week or so to start seeing what they have so far. If it's just the same problem I had with my last pregnancy, basically it's not life threatening and is only dangerous to the baby if it goes on a long time (it's a fast heart beat), because it could reduce the oxygen level the baby gets. Generally it starts and stops within about 2 minutes to half an hour, sometimes a little longer. So it's just annoying more than anything but makes me feel wiped out a lot of the time. Makes me and hubby nervous because I get short of breath and chest pressure, and DH is worried about what if I were to pass out while driving? Although I haven't passed out from this before, I've felt like I was going to in the past occasionally.
If they can't figure out what this is and/or correct it, I might not be having any more kids. I don't want to put myself or a future baby at risk if this is more serious than we think. I need to stay around for my family I already have!
The medication I'm on for this has the risk of low birth weight in babies, so that makes me nervous too, I didn't know that with my son and he was kinda small (for our family history of baby birth weights), 6 lbs 8 oz at 40 weeks. On DH's side the babies are like 9 and 10 lb babies, so I wonder if DS would have been bigger. *shrug* I just hope this all works out ok in the end and it makes me nervous!
It sounds like your dr is really on top of it, which is always good. I understand being nervous about it, it is always scary to feel your body going sort of out of control! I hope you get to bake this baby nice and big. 6-7 lb is actually pretty average but I am also from a "big babies" family so when M was "only" 8 1/2 lb I didn't think it was really that big
Yeah I felt like this last time I went in that my doctor actually paid close attention, in the past it seems like it would get downplayed with other doctors I've seen, but she's really looking into it closely, which is nice! I really like her.
I went through something similar with my last pregnancy. My heart was actually skipping beats and scared me to death. I got to wear the heart monitor, did an ekg and ended up doing a heart stress test where I had to run at 14 weeks. I can't remember what it was called now, but it did go away.
I have tachycardia now (normal is 100) but I'm on bp meds that slow my heart rate down. My babies have always been good sized for their age. I hope the monitor shows things are ok. They're a pain but it's good your doctor is on top of things.
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Wow I'm glad all ended well for you. That would feel really scary to be missing beats...I bet you felt pretty awful when that would happen. They haven't done any kind of stress test on me yet, I think because the arrhythmia I have (supraventricular tachycardia) is generally not dangerous to my health. But it's still worrisome and I'm hoping that's all that it is, and not something more. Doesn't help that my hubbs is an EMT and worries about it more than me!
I'm glad your dr seems to be on top of things and is monitoring you closely. I hope you don't have any more problems and that you and baby continue to be okay. Please keep us updated.
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Oh dear! That sounds awful! I had a really fast heart rate at one point when I was pregnant with Peter. They said it was because my potassium levels were too low....
I bet that was really awful feeling, Erica. They've run all sorts of tests on me, so it's not anything like thyroid or a deficiency. It's genetic, my mom has the same thing, and has since she was in her 20s. Thanks mom!
No worries, they gave me potassium supplements, and it all evened out. Is there anything they can do for a genetic issue? It can't be good for your heart. It's already working pretty hard supporting you LO.
Speaking of your LO, do you know what kind it is yet?
That's good that it all worked out.
I'm not even sure yet about what if anything they can do. It would probably depend on what was causing it, I have read online that sometimes there's an abnormal electrical pathway in the heart, and for that they can do ablation on that part, they snake a catheter up the blood vessel in your thigh to your heart and burn the bad pathway away with a laser. It's not 100% effective every time, but I think it has good success rates.
So we just need to find out more about it and why it's going on, at the moment they're mellowing out the symptoms with meds but that's not helping as much as it was. I imagine they might up the meds while I'm pregnant and then see about a permanent fix afterwards. Dunno!
Oh, and I don't find out boy or girl until a week from today! Can't wait!
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Gabriel 12/23/11 
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