My son Peyton, was diagnosed with what is called as HLHS at my 12 week ultrasound it was confirmed by an echocardiogram and an extensive ultrasound at 16 weeks. My husband and I went to the 16 week ultrasound hopeful that they were wrong and missed something unfortunately we were wrong. HLHS is known as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. This is a rare heart disease which affects 1 in every 3,841 babies born a year. With HLHS my son is going to need a series of 3 intensive surgeries to reroute his heart so that it makes up for the left side which never formed. Without the following surgeries my son has no chance of survival. The 3 surgeries are the Norwood right after birth, the Glenn which is anywhere up to 6 months after his first surgery and hopefully the last surgery he would need in the three stage surgery is the Fontan which is usually performed 18 to 36 months after the Glenn. 

This three stage surgery is to create normal blood flow in and out of the heart, which allows the body to receive the oxygenated blood it needs. 

With this devastating news we were given about our baby we have tremendous medical, gas and other expenses that are going to come along with this. I as the mother am not going to be able to work because my son is going to need constant watch and care during his first 5 years of life at least. We only have one income which is my husbands and it’s barely making ends meet. Starting in April all my appointments are going to be at The Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital and in Hershey at their Maternal Fetal Medicine. The distance to Hershey is 180 miles round trip. We will be going to the hospital multiple times a month for appointments as long as things go well if something goes wrong it could be more trips then what is expected. This alone will cost a tremendous amount of gas and expenses. I was also informed by my doctor I will most likely need to relocate between 34-38 weeks to be right by the hospital. This will be another major expense. 

As my husband and I are trying to wrap our heads around all of this we are also trying to financially figure everything out. We need to be able to try to save up as much as possible for all of this and to be able to get our son everything he needs. 

So we are asking for our friends and family and people they may know if they could please consider helping us out. If you can’t donate anything we ask if you could pray for our little one.