Colter was born on November 17, 2011 just a day past his due date. The weeks leading up to his grand arrival where absolutely miserable, only because we were so excited we could barely contain ourselves. My labor lasted 3 hours and 45 minutes, Tyler and I where blessed with a beautiful son. As we left the hospital we were told what a handsome healthy baby boy we had, and the two of us couldn't of been happier.
Then came the day we will never forget...I'm sure God works in mysterious ways because the chain of events happened in such a way only god could've laid out for us. First of all, we were planning on moving the following weekend after Colter's birth. The pediatrician we were planning on seeing wasn't available so we went with someone else, who had to squeeze us in on this particular Tuesday before our move. When the Dr. walked in I remember him saying how great Colter looked and asked how he'd been since bringing him home. Tyler and I answered him, telling him how great our time has been thus far, and what a wonderful baby he was. As he placed the stethoscope on Colter's chest you could see his expression change. He told us Colter had a heart murmur, well my initial feeling was, ok, I had a murmur when I was a baby, lots of people have murmurs end of story. Then, he listened further and said, "oh yes, he has a definite murmur, lets go ahead and check his oxygen saturation's." The nurse came in checked his saturation's and they were low, in the 80's low. I can't always speak for Tyler but I think at that moment, we both knew something wasn't right, but how broken our baby was we had no idea.
The Dr. immediately started making phone calls and getting things lined up for us to go see a pediatric cardiologist in Tacoma, he reassured us that technology is so advanced that if there was a problem with Colter we should've already found it, this visit was more for safety measures. The day was almost picture perfect to find out bad news, it was eerily dark out that day, to boot it was pouring down rain. As we drove to Tacoma I felt scared, and I'm sure Tyler was feeling the same way. As much as I wanted to be reassured that Colter was just fine, something inside me knew it was something more. I'll never forget sitting in traffic rain beating on our car, I felt Tyler grab my hand. We looked at each other, tears were welling in my eyes and he said to me, "babe, no matter what happens today, we have each other, ok." I agreed, and it confirmed he was sensing the same thing as I.
We finally got to the Dr's office, they checked us in and the wait began. We waited and waited for what seemed to be forever, at last they took us back, the Dr came in and listened to him ( we later found out he immediately knew there was a serious problem) after numerous tests and an ECHO, the Dr. popped his head in the door to let us know that he was doing a lot of work for us and it would be another 10 minutes. Well 25 minutes went by, he walked in and asked Tyler to take a seat. That's when he started to explain what was wrong with Colter. He has Truncus Arteriosus, this is a very rare defect, less then 1% chance that a baby would be born with this particular defect. The defect takes place in the first few weeks of conception, a normal healthy hearts has an aorta, and from the aorta stems the pulmonary artery. Also in a healthy heart we have a separation between our left and right ventricles. Colter's heart had just one big "Trunk" meaning his pulmonary artery didn't branch off like it was suppose to and there was a hole in between his left and right ventricle. As you can imagine, when the Dr was explaining all of this your brain only allows you to pick up and retain certain information like, "your son has a heart defect, truncus arterio-something, if it's not fixed he will die, surgery is the only option, you have to head to Seattle Children's now." Due to the defect our son was in heart failure, his blue blood and red blood were mixing and he wasn't getting adequate oxygen throughout his body. Eventually, if not repaired he would essentially drown in his own blood, and or he would go into cardiac arrest. I only add these details because this is the truth of the matter. I'm not here to paint a pretty picture about Truncus Arteriosus, the news we found out was not good.
Tyler and I were in utter disbelief, I mean we were just told we had a healthy baby and now he needs open heart surgery. My first thought was why? Why us? Why our baby? Colter looked so perfect and normal, we just couldn't believe he was so broken inside. So we began to make phone calls, and as I sit here and really remember how I was feeling in that moment, I think I was in shock, pure shock. My first phone call was to my mom of course, as I told her what Colter's prognosis was I had such a hard time saying, "Mom, he has to have surgery, open heart surgery." Those words made my stomach sink, and that's when my heart started to break for my son.
*I felt like I had get something posted on here, so my story will be posted in segments, so keep reading y'all more to come, eventually I will be posting on Colter currently.*
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