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On May 4, 2009, Josh and I discovered that our soon to be little girl, due on August 25th, would be born with a CHD known as HLHS (hypo-plastic left heart syndrome). Upon hearing "something is wrong with your baby's heart" our lives changed completely. Our little Ruth Elizabeth was brought into this world on August 18, 2009. She was delivered via c-section and rushed immediately from Barnes to Childrens' Hospital for a cardiac cath intervention. Her arial septum was reopened and a week later, Ruthie underwent her first open heart surgery, the Norwood. Unfortunately, Ruthie was not able to survive on her Norwood heart and the Glenn procedure would not work for her. Ruthie was placed on the heart transplant list Feb.3, 2010. After waiting in SLCH, Ruthie received a new heart on July 5, 2010. We are so humbly blessed to receive this gift of life. We now are on the road to recovery. We have had our ups and downs. We have become SLCH regulars due to countless hospital stays and ER visits. We are learning how to manage life outside of SLCH and with another little girl. Now that we have two children, we are learning the about being a heart FAMILY.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

6.19.09

Doctor's Appointment

Posted Jun 19, 2009 11:23am

Yesterday we went to Dr. Goel, the prenatal cardiologist, to do a follow ultrasound. Overall the appointment went well. There is no more fluid around her heart, which means less stress on this already complicated heart. So that is the good news. However, we did find out that the PFO connection is extremely restricted. At this point, this connection being very restricted is ok. Since it is restricted it is allowing blood flow, but not too much blood flow to the lungs. I mean it is not the best news, but it could have been completed gone or completed restricted which would have caused other major issues. We are just hoping that this connection does not become anymore restricted because that can lead to lung damage. Now when it comes to the lungs we are really unable to know what damage there is or what damage there could be to the lungs until after Ruthie is born. If the PFO connection becomes completely restricted and major damage is done to the lungs then there is little to no hope for survival since you cannot fix severely damaged lungs. Unfortunately, there are no tests that can check the lungs until after birth since the lungs are not used while she spends time in the womb.
We have another appointment on July 20th (34 weeks) to see how the PFO connection is developing and to determine our plan of action for labor and birth. We can not rule out being induced or having a c- section at this time.
Hopefully, everything continues to just get better and better and she just gets stronger each day so when it becomes her turn to fight she will be ready.

As my mom said yesterday, God answers prayers a day at a time.
So for today our prayer is that no matter what the circumstances are that we can handle i

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