The pandemic shut the world down a year ago. In that time, I have gotten pregnant, suffered a miscarriage, had a D&C, and got pregnant again. This pregnancy hasn’t been easy either. During my first trimester, I had a subchorionic hematoma and spent quite a bit of time on modified bed rest due to bleeding. I was terrified the entire first trimester, just waiting for a miscarriage. I panicked at every ultrasound and appointment. Then, we got to the second trimester and I felt like I could breathe. We found out we were having a son and we named him. We were excited to go to the anatomy scan and see our perfect boy. We left the anatomy scan feeling overjoyed and relieved.

But that relief and joy were short-lived. A week after the anatomy scan, my midwife called, as I wrote about in my previous post. It took two days for the referral to go to the other hospital and another four days to get an appointment. It was scheduled for this past Tuesday.

My husband was not allowed to come with me to the appointment. We tried to get them to allow him in, but they wouldn’t–hospital policy, they said. I am allowed to go on a plane, to a restaurant, to the store, and now to a game, but I cannot have my husband in the room with me to find out if my unborn son has a heart defect.

The sonographer was very nice and explained everything that she was doing during the echocardiogram while my husband sat in the hospital lobby four floors down. She told me that everything looked great and that we had a perfect little boy. I went and told my husband the good news. We decided to go out to eat for lunch to celebrate since we both had the day off.

Right before we were going into the restaurant, we got a call from the pediatric cardiologist, who asked if we could join a video chat. She told us that our son had a large ventricular septal defect. Our hearts dropped. We spoke at length about the next steps. We will have another echocardiogram at 30 weeks to see how big the defect is with the goal that it will shrink. Then, we will have our son meet with her two weeks after he is born to make a plan. The hope is that the hole will shrink enough before birth that it will be small when he is born and will close on its own. If it does not close on its own, he will start to experience symptoms a couple of weeks after birth such as fatigue, lack of interest in feeding, slow growth, etc. If the hole is large, isn’t closing, and is causing symptoms, he will have heart surgery to repair the defect.

I was in shock and I was frustrated. I was frustrated at the sonographer, at other pregnant, women, at the world. So many other people are getting pregnant. So many other women that I know have gotten pregnant and gone on to have beautiful healthy babies. Meanwhile, I have had to fight to have this child and he potentially will have to have surgery after birth. I have always wanted to be a mother and I never thought it would be hard to become one, but this journey has been difficult. I will love my child with or without his VSD, but I wish the journey to get him into the world wasn’t so difficult and hard.