Baby Atlas’ Heart Journey♥️

This is Atlas, him and his identical twin brother are almost 4months old. It’s been a rough few months for Our little guy. The first 2 weeks of his life were spent in the Nicu as he was a month early and needed further testing and monitoring on his heart. At birth they heard a very loud murmur and after further testing found it had several issues. At first we were convinced it’d heal itself and were very optimistic about the outcome. After several tests the NICU referred us to a specialist that travelled locally but was out of Spokane’s Children’s Hospital(2.5 hours from home) 

At 6 weeks old we had our first visit with the specialist where nothing had changed from the nicu, again we were optimistic it’d heal but we’re bummed it hadn’t changed for the better. We were given a list of things to watch out for in Atlas which would be signs of heart failure.. that was a bit terrifying.. but thank god for our owlets to monitor him while we slept.. 

6 weeks later we went back where they found again nothing had changed but we got more answers now that everything had set in.. and we had questions to ask... we learned the specifics..

Atlas has an ASD(Atrial Septal Defect) which presented to be fairly small.. but also a VSD (ventricular septal defect) or in other words a hole in his heart between the lower chambers.. we were told this hole was not small by any means.. on top of those two issues he also has a Pulmonary Stenosis (PS) which causes blood to have a tough time flowing properly through his body..  at the time thankfully the PS and VSD worked in each others favor and somewhat cancelled each other out.. but couldn’t be left that way and learned surgery would likely be nessesary around 6 months.. so again we went on our way with visits every 3 weeks now for an ultrasound and EKG for Atlas 

When Atlas had just turned 3 months we went to his apt expecting nothing to of changed again but it had. The ASD has healed which from the beginning was the least of our worries but still yay! And the VSD had gotten smaller. You’d think that’s great but without that larger hole there the PS was putting stress on his heart. The blood flow was putting pressure on one of the chambers..If it closed completely we’d be risking heart failure in our little guy. His Cardiologist reached out to the team of surgeons who would be doing surgery and they all agreed it was time to take action and open heart surgery would be necessary sooner than later..

We now wait wait for the call to schedule his surgery which the dr mentioned would be “weeks out” putting us in a tough situation as we’d expected to have months to prepare before it was necessary. Surgery will be in Spokane 2.5 hours away and he’ll be having to stay atleast a week if all goes perfect possibly 2 weeks after for monitoring putting us in a tough financial situation as my husband will have to take time off work for the surgery and will have to be there with us as someone has to care for our other two children and the other be with Atlas at the hospital as he recovers. We’ll have to pay for hotels, gas, food and of course still pay our bills even though zack will be out of work for this time. We hate to ask for help but are unsure how it’ll work out. Anything helps and is so appreciated, even just your thoughts and prayers ❤️ I plan to update as often as I can on baby Atlas here as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story  ❤️