Baby Girl Schmitz

Hi, my name is Meghan Gordon and my twin sister, Liz Schmitz, is having her first baby later this year (due in January 2023 but will likely be delivering in late December hopefully…it could be earlier).

A little background on Liz, she is married to Braden Schmitz and they found out they were pregnant with their first child in May 2022! Such an exciting time - they began planning their nursery, baby items, their lives with a new child, etc. Then on their 20-week appointment, the one where they find out the baby’s gender, they found out some unexpected and life-altering news. One, they are having a girl!! That’s the good news. The news that was hard to process was that their sweet, baby girl has some very serious (and rare) heart defects.

A little timeline from Liz about the findings thus far (UPDATED):

“Yesterday (10/12/2022) at the Children’s Hospital in st Louis, we received our official diagnosis of baby girls heart. She has Single Ventricle Heart defect with double outlet right ventricle with a VSD present as well.

Also, a pulmonary stenosis is present. This means only half of her heart is working. A normal heart has two ventricles pumping- one pumps blood to the body and one pumps to the lungs. Her ventricle pumping to the lungs is not large enough or strong enough to work, therefore she only has one ventricle and will only have one. She is receiving blood to the lungs, just in different ways and much less and slower than the normal heart would have with a pumping ventricle.

She will need at least 2-3 open heart surgeries. We are looking at a possible 1-3 week stay after delivery. It really just depends on how her heart does being outside of me, with low oxygen since her pumping ventricle to the lungs is not working.

1-2 surgeries will happen within the first week to months of life and the third will happen around 2-4 years old. We would hope then, that she would no longer need any more surgeries as long as things go well. There is a chance, over the years or even in her first years of life that her working ventricle could become worn down and this would result in a heart failure. That’s because, her single ventricle will be pumping pretty hard. This could mean a heart transplant.

Obviously this is worst case, but also a very real scenario. I’m going to pray & hope we don’t have that issue and that the surgeries required will do the magic.

She will be sent home with an oxygen pulse, scale, And iPad that we will use to track her daily so the cardiac team is watching her very closely. They will notice anything out of the usual. Again, why I say we are in good hands.

We have more details about the surgeries (Norwood, Glenn, and Fanton) that I can explain later. The Norwood is the questionable one- it all depends on her success directly after birth-but the cardiac doctor is thinking most likely she will undergo all three.

We will start going to st Louis weekly at 36 weeks and they’d liked to induce me at 39 weeks. This will be planned because the teams must be ready. We have plan A-C for pretty much any thing that might happen. Let’s hope our first and best plan happens. I can explain that better when we get closer.”

The latest update was received in St. Louis on October 12th and the updates will be provided when Liz is ready. I will update this accordingly.

They will be driving back and forth to Columbia and St. Louis regularly for appointments and will also be delivering via planned delivery in St. Louis so that the cardiac team is right there and ready to help baby girl Schmitz.

In an effort to help Liz and Braden with the expenses they will be taking on (travel, appointments, surgeries, stay in St. Louis, etc.), we set up this Go Fund Me. I set the amount, but we are all new to this and aren’t sure what is needed at this time.

Liz is also missing work right now a lot and will likely continue missing work throughout all of this.

We are also requesting lots of prayers for this sweet baby girl so that her heart can be healed and she can go on to live a long, happy, love-filled life!

UPDATE: Little, sweet Jaycee Anne is still needing your prayers and support as she has had numerous unscheduled procedures that cause her and mommy/daddy to stay in St. Louis many weeks at a time. Away from home, work, etc. We appreciate any and all help, prayers and donations.