Today for our prenatal heart specialist consult, I met with Dr. C, a Pediatric Cardiologist. I learned at the end of our meeting that he was the one who hired the current pediatric cardiology staff at Children’s Hospital, so I felt that much more confident with his findings. We’re extremely blessed to be local to the hospital and I know from several other moms, the staff at Children’s Hospital is amazing.
So onto Aria’s heart- we have wonderful news:
Aria Joy has a perimembranous ventricular septal defect!!!
What parent gets excited about hearing their child has a heart defect? Well for one: we already knew she has the defect, but to have it confirmed with the heart specialist and to have questions answered, gave me peace and reassurance. But I’m drawing this out too long because we actually do have more wonderful news:
- Dr. C said the hole is a moderate-size at 4.7mm and would either remain the same size at birth OR could begin to close on its own.
- He said he felt confident that the heart defect won’t affect labor, delivery, nor would we see any issues from the defect itself at birth!!!
- And even if the hole doesn’t begin to close on its own, it could potentially not ever affect her health, or worst-case scenario we would see issues manifest later when she’s around 4-6 weeks old.
So while Dr. C can’t rule out surgery completely, he strongly advised that we need to just “wait and see” after birth. We won’t even think about a surgical consult yet since he’s not convinced that there’s a need for surgery. I did ask about a catheter procedure versus open-heart and he advised that due to the location, a cath procedure wouldn’t be an option.
Thank you God!
We’re still praying hard that the hole will close and that no other issues manifest after birth, but this was blessed news.
No comments:
Post a Comment