Daphne Marshall Daphne's Special Heart

Welcome to our CaringBridge site. We've created it to keep friends and family updated. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement during this time when it matters most.

As most of you know, our daughter (Daphne Claire Marshall) has been diagnosed prenatally with a congenital heart defect (CHD) that will require immediate surgical intervention. The first surgery should take place around 4-7 days after her birth. They expect her to need at least a month to recover from that and then plan the second surgery for 8-10 months of age. The third and hopefully final surgery would then take place around 3-4 years of age. 

We have a great team of doctors in the cardiology department at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego and have faith that she'll be a strong fighter through this journey. We won't be able to get through this without your love and support and appreciate all the offers for pet sitting and everything else. Buster will definitely need some attention as we focus our efforts on Daphne in the upcoming months. 

My due date is August 2nd and we hope to have a normal delivery at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital. Daphne will be transferred to Rady Children's Hospital right away to get stabilized and prepare for her first surgery and we'll be staying close to the hospital during this time. 

Visiting is limited in the acute cardiac unit at Rady's to parents and some immediate family and as we learn more about how that works we will keep everyone updated.