Celebrating Hearts! Feb. 7-14 is Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week

As Valentine’s Day quickly approaches, our house is covered in pink and red hearts, stickers, glitter, and construction paper. Our annual Valentine card-making extravaganza has begun!

Hearts are BIG in our house. But not just on February 14th. During this month of chocolate, roses, and secret admirers, our family celebrates, along with thousands of other families, our daughter’s heart.

The week of February 7-14 is Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness Week. This is an annual awareness effort to help educate the public about congenital heart defects, the number one birth defect in the U.S. Approximately 40,000 babies are born each year with a CHD. My baby was one of them.

Our daughter, Gabriella, was born with a CHD known as Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), in which the wall that separates the upper heart chambers does not close completely – basically a hole in the wall. As is typical with an ASD, there were no symptoms, so we were shocked when during a routine medical checkup for a cough, a heart murmur was detected in Gabriella's heart. 

In January of 2008, our little girl underwent open heart surgery at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. Her surgery was a success and we are still amazed by how quickly she recovered. We are so blessed and forever grateful to her caring cardiologist, Dr. Felice Heller, her talented surgeon, Dr. Dennis Mello, and all the wonderful nurses and staff at Connecticut Children’s who saved her life.

It has been the most difficult experience my husband and I have gone through as parents. But we are not alone. One in every 125 babies is born with a CHD every year in the United States. For children and adults with a CHD, this can be a time of overwhelming heartache and despair.

But there is hope. If detected early, most heart defects can be corrected or helped with surgery, medicine, or devices, such as artificial valves and pacemakers. In the last 25 years, advances in treatment of heart defects have enabled half a million U.S. children with significant heart defects to survive into adulthood.  

Gabriella is definitely our super girl, and we are blessed that she is a healthy 8-year-old third grader. She has many friends, loves to laugh, plays soccer, and just earned her first medal in Irish Step Dancing. She will proudly show anyone who asks, her “heart scar" – she wears it as a badge of courage.

We are truly inspired by her every day and are grateful for the support of family and friends who werethere for us during a very difficult time. Gabriella is a wonderful daughter, big sister, granddaughter, and friend.

When your child is hurt, sick or even gets s bump, you wish it was you instead. As moms, we try to protect our children from any kind of pain, big or small. The hardest thing to do is watch your child undergo surgery.

If you have a child diagnosed with a CHD or have a friend who is looking for information, there are a number of organizations which can provide support and resources. One such organization, Little Hearts, Inc., is a national non-profit based in Connecticut. They were there to provide my husband and me with valuable resources and connected us with other families going through a similar ssituation. For more information on CHD and resources available, visit: www.littlehearts.org. Talking to another parent who is going through a similar situation can often help.

Wishing all our family and friends a wonderful HEART day!