Harlie's Heart

We had decided to wait to share this until we knew more, and now we do.

Harlie was born at 2:06am on 9/21/13. When the nurse and pediatrician checked her at noon they heard a loud and distinctive murmur. All babies are born with a hole in their heart because blood doesn't need to go to the lungs to get oxygen while in the womb and so the hole is to bypass the. This hole usually closes within 24 hours after birth. So at first they didn't make any mind of it. The next day at the noon check, the pediatrician was still hearing this murmur, very loud, very distinctive. We had been planning on going home that day, but he asked us to stay one more night, so he could check the murmur again the next morning. So we stayed another night, not really sure what was going on, and she was checked again the next morning. When he still found the murmur present he ordered an Echocardiogram. I got so scared thinking I was about to be discharged without my baby. We got the echo done and she did fantastic (taking an hour), then we waited for the results. The cardiologist who was interperting the echo was taking a long time to read it. Another night was creeping up on us and I had been discharged the pediatrician decided there was no reason based on how she was doing otherwise to keep her another night just because someone else was taking their time to get us results. So we were discharged home and made an appt to see the pediatrician the next day for the results.

The next day we found out that Harlie had a moderate to large muscular ventricular septal defect (VSD). Meaning the hole in her heart was larger than normal and was not closing like it was supposed to. But because it was muscular there was a good chance of it still closing on it's own without surgical intervention. Follow up was suggested at Primary Children's Hospital with a pediatric cardiologist. Which is what happened today and why we wanted to wait.

We wanted to know more about what was going on before sharing it. Today we were blessed with good news. The hole sounds like it is closing on it's own. We will have to continue follow up's at PCH in 6 months to see if it is continuing to close on it's own sufficiently. I feel so blessed for this good news and so lucky. Thank you to everyone who prayed for us.


This is what her condition is:

The blood in the RV is low pressure and is pumped to the lungs to be oxgenated -> it is returned to the LA then to the LV which is high pressure because it has to pump the oxgenated blood throughout the body. The hole is in the wall separating the RV and LV. Because one is high pressure and one is low pressure, Oxgenated blood is being pushed into the RV and not all of it is going through out the body has it should. This will normally cause poor circulation and "wet" lungs. The hole in Harlie's heart is closing enough that it is not effecting her at all.