My Little Sweet Heart

At our 20 week ultrasound we found out that Emmett had an isolated ventricular septal defect, or in layman's terms a hole in his heart. The doctor explained that this is a more common defect. She said that one third of babies will heal closed before they are born, another third will heal a little but the hole will be small enough that it won't affect their lives and the last third will need surgery at some point in their lives to close it (it could be as early as 3 months old). She then said that Emmett's was a larger hole and that it probably wouldn't heal by itself before he was born; it was more likely to be one of the other two outcomes. They scheduled us to have a heart echo with a Pediatric Cardiologist two weeks later. They said he would be able to tell us more. 

Over the next two weeks our little baby's heart was constantly on our minds. We decided not to worry about it because at that time there was nothing we could do about it, it wasn't affecting him at all while I was pregnant, and because we wanted to hear what the cardiologist had to say before we stressed out about it. We prayed for his little heart to heal, but understood that one of the ways for it to heal was through surgery. 

We went in for the ultrasound and echo and the doctor said agreed with what the first doctor thought, in that it probably wouldn't close by itself before he was born but that it didn't look like it was big enough to need surgery right away. He wanted to see us again in 8 weeks to see if it was healing at all. At that point we were a little relieved. We were more relieved 8 weeks later when we went back and he said that it was already beginning to heal itself. 

When Emmett was born we kept waiting for someone to tell us they hear a heart murmur but no one did! That meant that the hole was probably small by that point. A few days ago we took Emmett to the Pediatric Cardiologist and not even he could hear a murmur (yay). After a heart echo it was confirmed that our little baby's heart was healed. We were so happy. Our prayers were answered and our sweet little baby has a perfect little heart.

Comments

  1. Oh my gosh! Christy, I had no idea all that was going on! I was getting more and more tnse as I read through this post and breathed a big sigh of relief when I came to the end! What a happy ending (beginning) to a troubling situation! I'm so glad your prayers were answered in such a wonderful way! Thank you for sharing this!

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  2. I've been waiting to hear Christy, that is such wonderful news. I'm really glad you wrote about it and I'm so happy for Emmett and for all of you. Really, so wonderful.

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  3. What an amazing gift, I'm so happy he is healthy and well, Christy! I can't imagine the turmoil this must have caused in your hearts about this, but I'm so glad all is well. :)

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  4. I am glad you did post about it. I hate asking all the time and just am glad to hear it has healed on its own. It must be a hugh weight that was lifted.

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