4-12-11 - Echogenic Bowel

This is hard post to write because it's somewhat scary.  During our ultrasound, the technician had to go "talk to a doctor," who came back and confirmed that there was one abnormality that they were seeing in our ultrasound.  Our baby had what is called "Echogenic bowel," which basically means that the bowel - which normally shows up as dark gray or black on an ultrasound - was bright white. There are a number of reasons why this might happen.

1. The baby swallowed some blood and the iron in the blood shows up as white as it is being processed in the bowel - this is most likely and completely harmless, as the blood will be processed and then everything will go back to normal
2. It can be a sign of cystic fibrosis.
3. It can be a sign of Down's Syndrome.
4. It can be a sign that I had an infection of some sort, the most common being cytomegalovirus

We were nervous about the whole thing.  The ultrasound doctor was sort of weird and awkward, and so that didn't help us to feel any better about the situation.  On top of that, the little guy wasn't being cooperative during the ultrasound at all - there were some pictures that they had a really hard time getting - and I worried that this had something to do with it. 

Our Down's Syndrome screening showed that we were at extremely low risk for that, so the doctor that I spoke with my OBGYN's office didn't think that additional Down's testing was necessary.  However, I had originally declined the cystic fibrosis test since there was no indicators that there was any reason to concerned about CF.  But with this new diagnosis, I am going to have the CF test done because there is a reason now, and I think it's important to rule out any possible problems for the future.

I'm still waiting for a call my doctor's office so that we can get this set up, and hopefully everything will be taken care of and straightened out very soon.