That said, sometimes you will have your ultrasound and be told that your baby is a boy when you had your heart set on a girl or vice versa. This is called gender disappointment. You are not alone here. Many moms feel some degree of sadness to outright depression.
PFO stands for Patent Foramen Ovale. A simple way to think of PFOâs is as a hole in the main interior walls of the heart. In the image below, you can see where the hole forms a connection between the left and right atrium, aka the upper chambers of the heart. It is a very common heart condition, affecting a quarter of the population.
Does a Hole in the Heart Cause Strokes? Around 800,000 people a year in the US have a stroke, and of those, almost 200,000 are repeat strokes. Up to 40% of these strokes do not have a clear cause, and these are known as cryptogenic strokes. So what does PFO have to do with strokes? A PFO allows blood to go from the right side of the heart to the left.