Transposition of the Great Arteries: Levi’s Story
Levi’s congenital heart defects, Transposition of the Great Arteries and a VSD, were detected at his mum, Natasha’s 20 week scan. After putting up a very brave fight, Levi tragically passed away, leaving his parents and two brothers devastated. This is his story:

On the second appointment, the sonographer was still concerned with his heart and referred us to Cardiff University Hospital Fetal Medicine for a cardiac specialist to look at his heart.

In the next months, our excitement built along with that of our two other sons, Lucas and Leon, who saw our baby boy quite often on ultrasound scans.
Then on the 7th August 2019 we got the call we had been looking forward to but also dreading, to ask us to go in and be induced.
On the 9th August 2019, our baby boy Levi was born with Transposition of the Great Arteries, a complex heart defect, at St Michael’s Maternity Hospital in Bristol.
At just six days old, Levi had open heart surgery.
We almost lost our baby boy during the surgery because the hole in his heart was hard to close. When he came back to intensive care, he was put on the ECMO machine, which gave his heart and organs the rest they needed.
He remained critical. Every hour was a blessing and, as days passed, he was weaned of the ECMO machine. After an hour of fighting, our baby boy he went into cardiac arrest and it took 22 minutes to restart his heart.

It was so hard as he didn’t look like our Levi because he was pumped with fluid to keep his blood pressure up. He then developed more bleeding on his brain and slow kidney failure.
On 26th August 2019 Levi just couldn’t fight anymore. It got too big for him and we had to make the hardest, most heart-breaking decision of our lives to turn of our gorgeous boy’s life support.
Our Levi passed away in our arms.
We still don’t know what went so wrong. Now the wait continues for post mortem results.
We have worked with some parents who have been through the loss of a baby to produce a video called Dealing with Bereavement, which you can watch here.
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