Team Gio

Many of you know, and some may not.

Our story:
I was about 17 weeks pregnant when we went in to have our first ultrasound to find out the gender of our beautiful little baby. We never expected the first set of news. We found out our little one has a cleft lip and palate (no big deal). We were then referred to Sioux Falls to a specialist to get further testing done to make sure there was nothing else that could potentially be wrong. We went in with high hopes that our little boy was just fine!.... wrong... we had really high suspicions that he would be a Trisomy 13 baby. We then were informed that with these babies, there is a really low living rate. We were told that our poor baby boy would only live anywhere from a couple minutes to a couple hours, maybe even a couple weeks.... Our hearts were torn, but we knew we had to be strong not only for our families, but also for ourselves and the tiny little human growing inside of me. We needed to stay strong! We continued through the journey with high hopes and still continue to have hope! At 34 weeks, I woke up and was spotting. I went to my clinic and got checked out, was sent to Sioux Falls due to high blood pressure which eventually went down and I was discharged. They did not see any reasoning for me to stay. I then woke up Saturday morning in pain.... this time I was cramping. So I went to the ER. Where I then again, had high blood pressure, cramps, and spotting. I was then air lifted to Sioux Falls to come to find out that I had preeclampsia as well as our little guy had the cord wrapped around his next twice as well as around his body. I then needed an emergency c-section. (Everything went great!) our little guy came out crying and was not blue at all like they told us he would be due to his double left ventricle outlet heard disorder. He came out weighing 2lbs 10oz and 15.35 inches long. He did so well for his first week of life and we got the news that they found out there was more wrong with his heart than originally seen. We were then asked if we knew where we wanted to go for heart surgery, which we knew he would eventually need, but not this soon. We told them that we heard so much good news about the cardiology team and heart surgeons in Omaha. On Saturday, our baby boy turned a week old, we were then airlifted to Omaha where he has been doing wonderful so far with an amazing team of nurses taking care of him. He is slowly being weaned off of the dopamine because he was having problems with his blood pressure. On Monday, the cardiologist, nurses, and surgeons will take a look to see what their plan is for our little fighter.

Please continue to help us fight this battle and pray for all the best news possible.