Broken Heart

12/18/2012: The big day where we found out that we were having a BOY! The little guy was so active that they were unable to get a good picture of his heart. They asked me to come back the day after Christmas and I was happy to do that since it meant I would get to see him again.

"Mr. Stacey" at 20 weeks - completely smitten with this boy

I came back for the heart check the day after Christmas. I remember how it took the perinatologist a LONG time to look at little boy's heart. I remember wondering why it was taking so long and what they were thinking. After about an hour, the perinatologist said to me, "don't worry but it looks like something is wrong with your baby's heart. the right ventricle looks too big. It could be 200 different things but the best thing to do is have the cardiologist look at it". The hilarity of that statement still makes me laugh. I mean, don't worry? Seriously?!

 I remember calling Kyle and not being able to speak words because they just came out as sounds of crying. After calming down, I let him know that we had an appointment with a cardiologist the next day. I was so thankful we were able to see someone soon but that night was one of the longest nights of our lives....

The day of the cardiologist appointment was full of anxiety as the appointment was not until 3:30 in the afternoon.  The echo was a long test and I remember taking a lot of deep breaths to try to calm myself. We had such hopes that this was nothing at all and we could resume the normal pregnancy I was having.  After about an hour of chasing our sweet active baby around, the verdict was out.....

The cardiologist sat us down and came in with a lot of pictures. We knew this can't be good. Turns out our sweet boy really does have a broken heart. All of our hearts were broken that day.

In summary: the right ventricle is actually a normal size - it's the left ventricle that looked too small and made the right ventricle look too big. There was (and still is) concern for hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This is a for sure ticket to open heart surgery at birth and a number of additional surgeries. Here is a link to an informative website about it should you be interested in using the Google machine for this problem:
http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site502/mainpageS502P0.html
 The little guy also had for sure what is called a coarctation of the aorta. The third concern was the top of the "candy cane" of his aorta. This was narrow as well. http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site520/mainpageS520P0.html

Why is this happening? What did I do wrong? I was so angry when we heard this news. I was angry at myself, angry at Moms with children that did not have heart problems, angry at something bigger than myself that I couldn't quite get a handle on. I tried so hard to be a healthy pregnant lady. I was exercising, eating right, controlling my stress. I went through all of the stages of grief and after a few days that anger turned into acceptance as I knew it would. We met with a genetic counselor who pretty much told us this is nothing that we did, nothing hereditary, and nothing we could have prevented. There is no known cause for most congenital heart defects. They just happen.

Needless to say, we had a few problems on our hands. I was amazed they could even see these "defects" in a 20 week old fetus and I was also thankful they found this problem this early. Good thing is that every other part of our little man was more than perfect from his brain to his toes. It is just this "little road bump" we could deal with together. A strong, positive couple we are and a strong, positive couple we will continue to be.