After spending the evening reading another heart mums blog and being amazed by the journey they have been on I've decided to start my own. Since finding out at 17 weeks pregnant that our baby has a rare and complex heart condition these blogs have helped me in more ways than one - I hope I can do the same for other heart mums.
So I guess I'll start at the beginning..
This is my second pregnancy, I have a gorgeous and healthy little boy called Teddy who is 16 months old. We found out that I'd fallen pregnant again the day before his 1st Birthday party and although it was a shock we were over the moon as we'd always wanted our children close in age.
We were so excited (and impatient) that we decided to book a private scan to find out the gender, this would happen at 17 weeks.
However the scan revealed more than just the gender of our baby. As the midwife checked the heart she noticed something wasn't quite right - it looked like it hadn't formed properly. I was in complete shock and burst into tears, I kept asking what she meant and wanted to know exactly what was wrong with my baby - but the midwife couldn't tell us. She explained that she wasn't trained in that area but just knew what she was looking at wasn't right. She asked if we wanted the scan to continue - which we did and told us that our baby was a little girl. She then explained that she would call my hospital while we waited and make me an appointment to be seen the next day.
When we got back to the car I had messages from everyone wanting to know what we were having - we now had to explain over and over that we had a little girl but she had something wrong with her heart.
I didn't sleep at all that night and couldn't wait to get to the hospital the next morning - I had so many questions and was desperate for answers.
They didn't tell me anything, they wouldn't even scan me. I was basically told that if I hadn't of paid for a scan I wouldn't of known anyway because these things aren't picked up until 20 weeks. I couldn't go another 3 weeks worrying and not knowing so after sitting up the hospital all day they said the best thing they could do would be to refer me to Great Ormond Street, I'd be seen a week later.
It's a day I will never forget, I had an Echocardiogram done and me and my partner Joe were taken into another room. The doctor showed us a picture of a normal heart, then turned the page to show us a picture of our daughters heart. I broke down again - he didn't need to explain anything to me I could see by the picture that my little girl had a serious heart condition. The top 2 chambers of her heart are joined together.
It's called Left Atrial Isomerism the doctor explained, her heart works just as a left side. He then went on to tell us that this also causes other organs to form on the wrong side of the body, her stomach is on the right which could cause an obstruction of her bowels. She will also have multiple spleens instead of 1 which will cause a low immunity. I thought that was it, how could she possibly make it with all these problems.
To our relief the doctor then explained that this can all be fixed, she would need operations but once that's all over she should lead a normal healthy life - and that's what we have to hold on to right now.
He booked us in to see him again on the 26th March when I'll be 26 weeks pregnant - it can't come soon enough.
XxX
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