What's been going on...

So, the past three weeks have been pretty tough in the Moss Household.  Here is my best attempt of making a long story short. 

On July 25 we went in for our gender ultrasound. Baby Moss did not want to cooperate for a long time and the tech said she though it was a girl.  Apparently, he did not appreciate being called a girl, and finally moved just enough so that we could see he was indeed a boy!  She got all the measurements she needed, except his heart. So, they sheduled another ultrasound for the next Tuesday. 

At this appoinment we were excited to be able to see him again. He was very active this time around.  But, midway through the ultrasound we were told the left side of his heart did not look quite right. The ultrasound tech called in the doctor, and she confirmed that the left side of his heart was underdeveloped.  I immediately broke down. We never expected anything to be wrong with our child.  We then were given an immediate appoinment the next day with a pediatric cardiologist at ECU.  We went in and they did an extensive ultrasound of his heart.  We just sat there while the doctor and ultrasound tech watched the screen and talked medical jargon back and forth.  Finally, the doctor took us in his office to explain to us what they had seen.  Our baby's left ventricle was very under-developed and basically not functioning.  He also had a double outlet right ventricle.  For all of you out there like us, who are not heart specialists, we of course didn't know exactly what that meant.  Here is how it was explained to us: the left ventricle pumps blood into the body, and the right pumps blood into the lungs.  So, our baby's right ventricle is having to do both.  This doesn't pose much of a problem to him while in the womb, but once he is born, without surgery he will not survive. Therefore, Baby Moss will need immediate open heart surgery after birth, another around six months, and a third between the ages of 2 and 4.  We were also told babies with heart defects are at a higher risk for chromosomal abnormalities and were advised to have an amnio test done. The final kicker came when we were told we would outlive our child.  As you can imagine we were both devastated. 

The following Monday, we had yet another appointment.  This one was again at ECU and was a level 3 ultrasound.  They looked at Baby Moss for almost an hour, measuring everything starting at his head, and down to his toes.  Thankfully, everything else looked perfectly normal.  We waited a very long two weeks, but finally got the call today that the amnio results are normal! We are so relieved, happy, grateful, etc.

It has been an extremely long and difficult few weeks.  We have received more support from our family and close friends than we ever could have imagined. We don't know what we would have done without it. We deicided to start this blog to let our family and friends follow along with us on this journey.  We hope that you will all keep us in your thoughts and prayers.  We also would really like to know if anyone knows anyone else in the same or similar situation and their story. We feel very blessed that we were chosen to be this little boy's parents, for we know God will not give us anything more than we can handle.


P.S.  We could not agree on a name for Baby Moss before all of this was known.  After the fact, that didn't seem so important.  I told Drew we could name him whatever he wanted. So, Baby Moss' name is Colt Warner Moss (for now anyway ;p).

                                                                Normal Heart

                                                             Colt's Heart