The Shock of Finding Out

I'm Laura, and am married to an amazing husband and have a beautiful little girl named Olivia who is 14 months old. We live in beautiful Valdez Alaska, and found out months ago we were going to be adding to our little family. Then at 18 weeks we had our first ultrasound and found out that were going to be having twins! It was shocking and took a little while to sink in until I moved into my preparation mode. We had everything we needed for one more baby except boy clothes, so I started collecting everything I would need for twins. We were having a boy and a girl!

At 20 weeks I went to Anchorage and met with maternal fetal medicine specialist and had a more detailed ultrasound done there too. We then got even more shocking news, the little girl (twin b) has a very serious heart condition called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). She didn't give much information on the condition, other than that she would need to have surgery.






After telling Brandon he looked it up online and I've connected with other mom's that have babies and children with HLHS and have found out that depending on how severe her condition is, she will need to be born out of state, and also need three surgeries, one within the first few days of being born, one at 4 months, and one later on around 3 to 5 years of age. Since they don't do the surgeries here, I could be out of state for months while she recovers and possibly through till after the second surgery.

I am 22 weeks along now, and we meet with a pediatric cardiologist in three weeks to see how severe her condition is. She may not be eligible for the surgeries, but we won't know how good or bad it looks till we see the cardiologist and make plans from there.

We have had a rough couple weeks thinking about everything, and not knowing anything for sure. I'll keep you updated on what we know as we find out, but please keep us in your prayers. Its devastating thinking of losing a child or thinking of all the pain and hardships she will endure in life just to survive as soon as she is born.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.