Kaija, June 2003

December 2002

On December 24, 2000 my husband and I learned that we were pregnant with our second child. We had a very normal pregnancy and at 20 weeks learned our baby to be would be a little girl. This tickled both of our hearts because we already have a son. Our family would be complete. My husband was always told he would never have children, so two is a nice number. On August 16, 2001 I went in for a normal C-section delivery. I had a C- section with my son and elected to have her born the same way. At 9:45 AM Kaija Nicole was born into this world. She had a head full of dark hair and had blue/green eyes. She was 8 pounds 5 ounces and was 21 inches long. She was beautiful.

Kaija was breech and had taken in some fluid during the delivery so they monitored her carefully to make sure her breathing would be fine. She did very well her first day of life. On her second day here one of the pediatricians that see our son came to check on her and make sure she was doing fine. While checking her heart he heard a heart murmur, later described as a washing machine sound. He had a second opinion done by Dr. Reich, a pediatric cardiologist at Watson Clinic (Lakeland, Florida). He did an EKG and an echocardiogram. This is where they found she has a hole in her heart between the top two chambers and in the lower left chamber her pulmonary valve was not working properly. At this time he saw no reason for concern and hoped that as her heart aged some it would mature and she would be fine. We left the hospital hoping all would be well.

Since than we have had numerous PC visits and many up and downs. We had a referral to Dr. Girroud at All Children Hospital (Tampa, Florida) for possible surgery. A sedated echo was done to make sure surgery was needed and it wasn't. We were very glad. So far Kaija has needed no intervention and in September 2002 her echo and EKG reported she has had no change from the day she was born.

We moved from 3 month monitoring intervals to 6 months and our next is is March 2003.