Our Story
The Beginning of Our Experience with CHD
Congenital Heart Disease: An abnormality in the heart that develops before birth.
Roughly 1% of children are born with CHD. Our son was one of them.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 1 Corinthians 15:54
Lauren and I met in 2020. We quickly became good friends and began dating in September of 2021. Five months later, we were engaged. On July 2, 2022, we got married.
On October 11, 2022, we found out we were expecting our first baby! While this was unplanned and unexpected, we were excited. From November to January, things were progressing like normal. February 1, we had our anatomy scan. We found out our baby was a boy, but the scan revealed something else.
That next day, the nurses called Lauren saying that the doctors’ found some concerning things on the anatomy scan and wanted us to get another scan done. They did not have any answers for us other than something might be wrong with our baby. At that time, we were referred to a high risk pregnancy center at a hospital in Milwaukee. We called to set up the scan appointment but could not be seen until March.
After a long, anxious month, we were told on March 1 that there were significant concerns found with our sons heart. One week later, we had another scan with a pediatric cardiologist, and he told us just how bad things were. Our son’s heart was enlarged, and all of his valves were deformed or not working properly. Our options at this point were an emergency surgery after birth, an eventual heart transplant, or immediate hospice care. We weren’t even sure that he would make it to term.
Lauren and I are both trained in Biblical counseling, so we knew the statistics and reality of infant loss, but the news hit us hard. We held each other close and remembered God’s Word and faithfulness.
February 7-14 is CHD awareness week. In honor of that, I will be posting every day this week about some part of our story or a Bible passage that helped us through it all.
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