A Healing Heart

The day after Abigail was born,  her pediatrician discovered a murmur when he listened to her heart.  I remember when he came into the room to talk to me that Saturday morning and told me that he had heard a murmor and he wanted her to have an echocardiogram.  I was by myself, as Ryan had gone home for a bit, and I was scared out of my mind.  As a brand new parent to hear that your child has a heart murmur and needs tests done, it's very scary.  I tried not to worry too much, as her pediatrician did tell me that her heart seemed to be functioning as it should and he was not too concerned but wanted to check things out anyway.  So she had the echo later that day, and they sent the results to the National Children's Medical Center in Washington DC to a pediatric cardiologist who comes down to Salisbury once every few months for his opinion.

She was found to have a few very small holes in the muscular area in the middle of the two chambers in her heart- they call this ventricular septal defects.  We were told that since the holes are so very small, they were not effecting the function of her heart in any way, but just causing the murmur.  We knew things were in God's hands.

We were fortunate we didn't have to travel to DC to see that cardiologist because he was coming to Salisbury in November, so we set up a follow up appointment.  At that time, they did more testing and the holes had already showed  signs that they had started to close, and it was difficult to hear the murmur- yay!

Today we had our 6 month check up with the same cardiologist.  They did an EKG and another Echo, and found that 2 of the 3 holes have completely closed, and one is still there but very tiny.  Tiny that he couldn't even hear the heart murmur.  Soooo relieving.   We don't have to return for another year.

All along, I have tried not to worry about this, knowing that things were in God's hands.  I always figured that if the pediatrician (who is Chief of Pediatrics at our hospital right now) told us not to worry, and that her heart functions fine, then we shouldn't worry.  But still, it seems a duty of being a parent is to worry!

I am just sooo incredibly blessed to have such a healthy, happy baby.  I am so glad that the issues with her heart were not something where we needed to have even more testing, or even worse, surgery.  I rejoice that the holes are closing and that there are no major issues.  God has certainly had His hand in this, and  He has certainly blessed us, in many ways.