Grayson's Heart

Our Grayson has a sweet heart, but it has a couple of problems. These were discovered on our last day in the hospital, right as we were waiting to get our discharge papers. Grayson's pediatrician walked in to examine him and said, "Has anyone told you that he has a heart murmur?". Of course, we said NO, and he set us up for an appointment with the pediatric cardiologist. When he was only 4 days old, we went for his first visit. They checked him out for 2.5 hours straight, and came back to tell us that he did have 2 places in his heart that needed monitoring.

Yesterday, we visited the pediatric cardiologist again. We discovered some good news, the VSD that he has is very small and will likely cause him no problems in life. Lots of people have this defect... even Jason... BUT, they said it isn't genetic.

The hole that we are concerned about is called an Atrial Septal Defect or ASD. This is basically a hole between the upper two chambers. These defects are actually very hard to hear with a stethoscope, so we are kind of lucky that his VSD caused us to be referred... otherwise, no one would have known that he had this other problem. Left untreated, it can cause one side of the heart to become enlarged because it has to work harder than the other side. This can lead to several different problems, with high blood pressure being the main issue.

Worse case scenario will be that when he is three years old he'll need an overnight stay in the hospital to have a heart catheterization done to close the hole. Most likely, we'll be able to wait until he is 4 or 5 to do the operation. However, we may get lucky and NEVER have to have surgery.

We scheduled another appointment for September 7th to have another look at his heart and see if it is improving. Until then, Grayson gets to be a normal baby, and should have no issues at all with this ASD thing. :)