We will be using this site to keep everyone updated on Baby Rio’s arrival and the days leading up to surgery, as well as his/her post-operative progress. Please check this site if you don’t hear from us; it’s going to be a long few weeks traveling to/from CHOP every day and we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to respond to every text and phone call.
To give everyone a tentative idea of what the next few weeks will look like...
May 4th is our induction date! But of course the baby will make his/her debut whenever he/she decides. After that...
There is a 50% chance that Baby Rio will need a cardiac catheterization immediately after birth to have a stent placed to help with blood flow. If the catheterization is not needed, he/she will go to the Cardiac ICU (CICU) for medication management and be there until surgery and after surgery, until stable enough to go to the step-down unit.
Within 3-5 days after birth, Baby will go in for his/her Arterial Switch Operation (ASO), which is an open heart surgery that will correct his/her congenital heart defect (Transposition of the Great Arteries, i.e. TGA). The ASO repair of TGA has an extremely high success rate and, if all goes as planned, we will hopefully have Baby home within 3 weeks of surgery (although the hospital stay can last up to 6 weeks if there are complications).
CHOP has been absolutely incredible every step of the way and we have all the faith in the world that our baby is in the best hands possible. This is of course all new and scary to us, but it’s so routine to our medical team and we’re extremely lucky to live so close to a hospital with surgeons that are skilled in the repair of TGA.
We appreciate all of the love and support we’ve received as we’ve learned to accept our diagnosis and prepare for everything ahead of us. We are so excited to get over this speed bump and bring our sweet little babe home very soon!
