At five days old, Brianna was diagnosed with a heart condition, adding to what had already been an anxious beginning. Here, her mum Kirsten opens up about their story:
(The photos in this story were taken by and belong to the author, depicting their family’s personal journey.)
We had quite a stressful pregnancy with Brianna, as she was measuring small with small femurs. We needed growth scans every two weeks to monitor her. She was born at exactly 37 weeks via an emergency C-section as her heart rate was dipping. When she was born she was taken to the neonatal unit due to being very small, low blood sugar and needing some help.
At first our biggest worry was her size and we were waiting for her to put on enough weight before she could go home. When she was around five days old a heart murmur was picked up which didn’t go away, and she was then given an ECHO that showed a large VSD.
It was about a month later that we were given her Tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) diagnosis. We were honestly floored by this, especially with how many scans we had during pregnancy and how many times we were told “she’s happy” when her heart rate was taken on a Doppler.
It felt like such a long time before we received Brianna’s surgery date at Glasgow Children’s Hospital. We were so scared of what to expect and couldn’t help but sometimes fear the worst, but at 13 and a half months old she sailed through her open heart surgery and recovery, and was home one week after the operation. The care she received was amazing. The doctors, nurses and surgeons are real-life superheroes. It’s a journey you cannot fully prepare yourself for.
She has the usual residual VSD after surgery and her surgeon told us that he couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t need further surgery later in life, so she will continue to be monitored, but so far we’ve been really happy with her recovery. She’s catching up on milestones and this month she started crawling.
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