At some point on Tuesday (the day I had Chloe), the Nurse Practitioner came into our room and gave us some not so great news. While she was listening to Chloe's heart, she heard a murmur. Because of the murmur, Chloe had to have an echocardiogram. The information from the echo was then sent down to Yale Cardiology for analyzation by Dr. Fahey and the results were that Chloe has a small muscular ventricular septal defect in her heart - aka a small hole in her heart. We were told to schedule a follow-up appointment with Yale Cardiology as soon as possible once we were released, which the doctors down there would be able to provide us with more detailed information about her condition. That next day we called and scheduled her follow-up for November 4th, which seemed like light years away.
I can't even remember what my initial thoughts were once I heard the news. I do know that it was explained to us that we had to keep a close eye on Chloe's weight because one of the symptoms associated with a VSD is poor weight gain. Some other symptoms we were told to watch for were fatigue and rapid/heavy breathing. Of course, I got a bit nervous with the weight gain aspect of it since with breast feeding my supply wasn't so great with AJ so I wasn't sure what to expect this time around and my milk hadn't come in yet since I just had her early this morning. But only time would tell.... I also made sure not to look up any information on the internet. I didn't want to freak myself out with worst-case scenarios and all the scary information that one can find regarding any medical condition on the world wide web. I put my trust in the doctors at Backus and at Yale and figured if her condition was THAT bad, they would have already transported her down to Yale.
Fast forward to tonight when one of the nurses came in and told me that Chloe had lost 10% of her body weight. This meant we were going to have to start supplementing. I was all for it because I wasn't going to mess around with her heart condition. But at the same time I still wanted to breastfeed so she could get my milk and all the health benefits from it so I began pumping. It was a bit discouraging at first since my milk still hadn't come in and I was pumping less than 1ml with both sides combined, but the nurse reassured me that every little bit helps and that it is still so early on.
Another point of reassurance was from my sister's friend, Leanne. About two years ago she gave birth to two adorable little twin boys, Marcus and Riley and both of them had heart conditions. Riley's condition was quite serious and had to undergo many surgeries, whereas Marcus' heart had a small hole like Chloe's does. Kimmy had contacted Leanne and had her text me so she could pass on her knowledge and experience with a VSD and reassure me that everything would be okay. She made sure I knew that if it was super serious they would have already transported Chloe to Yale. She also passed along information about Yale Cardiology and how great they are. She definitely helped to ease my nerves and was a sounding board for any questions/concerns I had.
With all of this going on I had a bit of a break down tonight though. Finding out our sweet little Chloe has a heart condition, her losing 10% of her body weight and then the stress of already having to pump (all my nursing mothers know exactly what I'm talking about!) it just really got to me. What had I done during pregnancy for her to develop the small muscular VSD? Could I have prevented it? All of these thoughts kept running through my head and the tears just started flowing. Michael was there to help calm me down, but I still had a horrible feeling that I had caused her to have this. As I was talking to one of my nurses the next morning, Dr. Brown had come in and saw I was upset and asked what was going on. I explained everything I had just mentioned and he made sure to reassure me that there was nothing I could have done to prevent her condition and if it was THAT bad they would have already transported her to Yale. He made it a point to make sure I knew that everything would be okay and Chloe was just fine.
We won't really know all the details of her condition until our November 4th appointment with Dr. Hellenbrand... so until then, we will snuggle and cuddle our little Chloe with lots of love.
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