Family & Friends,
This may shock some of you but we are 19 1/2 weeks pregnant with our second baby. We will be having a baby boy and the due date is set for August 7, 2011. I wish we were closer to all of you so that we could share this news with you in person. We tried for a long time to get pregnant with this little one and we are very excited about it. In the rest of this e-mail we want to share with you the situation that we have been put in.
When Brittany was 14 weeks along we had our second ultrasound. I was in Utah so Britt was at this appointment alone. Her OB/GYN informed her that he wanted to get a second opinion about the shape of our baby's heart. He also recommended to her that under the circumstances he would highly recommend getting the full maternity panel of blood work done. The blood work was to check for Down Syndrome and any other neural tube defects. We knew the results of these tests were not going to change our mind about having the baby. They would just help us and the doctors understand the baby's situation. We got the results the following Monday and they were negative for all disorders. We were so thankful and a little weight was lifted off our shoulders. We still had one more hurdle to cross and that was our pediatric cardiologist appointment that was set for March 15th.
Up to March 15 we had prayed and prayed that this baby would be ok. We felt calm and felt no need for concern. We had an hour long ultrasound with the best pediatric cardiologist in our area. Once the ultrasound was over she told us we were having a boy. Brittany and I were so happy but we were eager to hear the results. The doctor left the room for some time and came back with some diagrams. She spoke to us about the regular blood flow through the heart then proceeded to tell us that our sweet baby boy had a significant heart defect. This defect is 100% fatal after birth if we don't perform open heart surgery the first week of his life. The heart defect is called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. (Also known as HLHS) We have never heard of this disorder but it quickly became clear how serious this was. The doctors told us that this was one of worst, if not the worst, defect a baby can have. To put it simply, the left side of the heart is unable to grow because it is not getting blood flow. If any of you are aware of the way a baby's heart works then you know that blood bypasses the lungs and re-routes itself back into the body. The baby has no use for lungs in utero because it is still attached to the umbilical cord. So for now our baby is safe in Brittany's stomach and is doing well. We quickly wanted to know about our options and we were given three of them. 1. To terminate the pregnancy 2. After the birth of the baby let him pass away in the first few hours/days of life 3. Perform open heart surgery within the first week of life. We decided that option 3 was the best option for us. The baby will be born at full term and he will be taken straight to the highest level Newborn Intensive Care Unit. (NICU) He will remain there until he is strong enough for surgery which will most likely happen in the first 8 days. The chances of our baby not making it to surgery are 20%. Without going into too much detail this is the first surgery of many that this baby will have throughout his life. They will perform another surgery at 3-4 months of life and then another between 2-3 years old. All of these surgeries are life changing and very risky. At 20 years of life our son will be put on the heart transplant list and get a new heart. Every 10-15 years after that he will need a new heart. We feel that it is important for us to save this baby and to let God control the outcome.
That following day we were scheduled for another ultrasound with my normal OB/GYN and we discussed everything with him. He felt that he wanted to put us in touch with a perinatalogist and have another ultrasound downtown. We decided to go downtown that day and have another ultrasound to check for any other abnormalities throughout the baby's body. The doctor did not find any but recommended that we have an amniocentesis. The amniocentesis will check for chromosomal abnormalities and give us a better look at what we are dealing with. If our baby were to have a chromosome problem then the doctors recommended that we don't perform any heart surgeries. They believe that this would be too hard on our baby and the baby wouldn't survive. We prayed and we felt that having an amniocentesis was the best option for us. The procedure was really hard on Brittany and really painful. She had some shots after and she was sent home on bed rest for a few days. We will get the results of the amnio in 10-14 days.
Our doctors have also informed us that our baby is more susceptible to infection and problems with digestion. A major problem with heart problems is the inability to digest certain proteins for a normal person to survive. We won't know if our baby has these problems until birth. We were also informed that our baby has a higher chance of just passing away through out his first few years of life.
We have had a rough couple of weeks and a devastating couple of days. We are now seeing 1 doctor, 2 specialists and we will be meeting with the heart surgeons shortly. Brittany will continue to have two ultrasounds a month by the perinatalogist and another by our pediatric cardiologist. We will be delivering at Texas Children's Hospital and that is where they will perform the surgeries.
We ask all of you at this time to keep us in your prayers and your hearts. We have had the worst days of our life this week and we hope to become a little stronger. We know that Heavenly Father loves us and he loves our little boy. We hope that you will pass this story on to our friends and family. We have a really hard time speaking about this without crying or becoming overwhelmed. We ask that you be excited for us to welcome this baby into the world. We are not ready to answer questions about it because it is still too fresh. When we get updates you all will be the first to know. We also ask that you do not share this information on facebook or through the internet. Brittany's family is still unaware that we are pregnant let alone in this overwhelming situation. Brittany will be flying to Utah next week to be with them and she will share the news then. We love you all and thank you in advance.
Love, Seth & Brittany Watson
