On Friday I was in a bit of a fender-bender, at 27+3 weeks. Thankfully it was very minor, but still landed me in OB triage for 6 hours for monitoring & ultrasounds. During this time they detected a fetal arrhythmia. They assured me that "most fetal arrhythmias turn out to be nothing", but to follow up with my doctor. I wasn't too stressed- they were pretty calm about it, and I figured if it was a real big deal, they would have had me see a specialist while I was there. The heartbeat is usually around 140 which is right where it should be. So at least it's not really high or low, just a bit irregular. Every 6-8 beats it sounds a bit weird and gets off-rhythm.

Sooo.... I had my follow up with my OB today. He did the doppler and the arrhythmia was much, much more noticeable. My OB leans more on the "Let's not freak out and do every test" side, so instead of referring directly to a fetal cardiologist for an echo (which seems to be the standard); he referred me to the perinatalogist center that did my anatomy scan, for a Level II ultrasound of the heart. Then we'll have a consult immediately thereafter.

For the first time, I started to truly worry this could actually be a big deal. My father has been hospitalized multiple times and has had 2 open-heart surgeries due to arrhythmia.

Please tell me about any experiences you know of with fetal arrhythmia - how it went, how your doctors monitored you, what the birth experience was like, etc.