Frank's Broken Heart

Frank Doubleday June 5, 2014 At our 20 week ultrasound our baby was found to have something wrong with the heart, 2 weeks later we had a fetal echo cardiogram. Our baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, born with half a working heart. Unknown to me at the time it was also CHD awareness week, and we had become more aware of CHD than most do. The most devastating words to hear from a pediatric Dr of any specialty is ” termination ” meaning this is so serious that an abortion is still an option, and no one would blame us. For us it wasn’t, for me I’d already grown to love this little life wiggling around so as not to be dismissed. We will be having a baby with HLHS in June in Boston our second child. But for us it’s a little harder, I’m a stay at home mom, per say, we have a farm so we all work together. As everyone knows June happens to be our busiest time and for my husband there is no medical leave time, no vacation or sick time to be taken only the reality that if the crops don’t get planted the mortgage won’t get paid. It’s 3 hours to Boston with traffic from our farm, for him it will be 3 hours from our baby who may never see our farm, for me it will be 3 hours from my best friend, my loving 2 year old son and all the things we do. It will be a lot of trips to Boston for all of us, and many long phone calls I’m sure, but we’re not scared. When our crops fail we replant next year and try again, this is no more than a passing hail storm on our tobacco crop, we’ll pull threw it somehow and will not be defeated by CHD. Editor’s note: On Friday, June 5th, baby Frank was born. He did great as he waited his first few days for his open heart surgery. Here are mom’s words after the surgery: There’s nothing that can prepare you for walking up to a tiny infant bed surrounded by monitors and seeing a walnut sized heart beating under a clear dressing over a 1 inch gap in your newborns chest. Some how you don’t scream or break apart, you watch with only a few stray tears streaking your cheeks and know he is stronger than you’ll ever know.