Here comes the science bit...

I've realised that a fair number of people do not know the whole story of Amelia's heart condition, what it is, how it came about and what was done about it. This is completely due to me not saying very much until now.

On Wednesday 28th April 2010, at 4.48am, Amelia was born. She had swallowed meconium during birth and she was very phlemy and bunged up. This wasn't a huge concern, doctors helped to suck out the mucas and things were improving.

I had yet to fully establish breastfeeding and so to help a fretful and hungry Amelia get some food in her tummy she was given a bottle of formula. Amelia guzzled it down so quickly that her newly developed skill of swallowing could not keep up and she choked. She was taken down to the Neonatel Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and had an x-ray to check if the milk had gone on her lungs. For any new parent this was a worrying time but little did we know that this was the beginning of a string of events that, looking back, was all happening at the right place at the right time...

The doctor on duty that night was a heart specialist. Looking at Amelia's x-ray he could see that her lungs were clear, but there was something not quite right about her heart. There was a visable hole between the lower two chambers and as a concequence one of her valves was not functioning properly. Amelia had been born with a congenital heart disease called Tetralogy of Fallot which reduces the heart's ability to circulate oxygenated blood.

This diagram provided by the British Heart Foundation illustrates the differences between a normal heart and a heart with Tetralogy of Fallot.

Here comes the explanation... concentrate!  The Ventricular sepal defect (VSD) is the hole between the two chambers. Amelia's operation involved sewing a patch over the hole. The narrowed pulmonary valve has been widened so that blood can flow to the lungs properly.

Although Amelia's heart is technically 'repaired' it will never be completely normal. The pulmonary valve is still abnormal and does not close properly meaning blood leaks back into the right chamber. As a result the valve has to work harder than usual and, over time, may become enlarged. This will have to be monitored over the years and it is possible that Amelia may have to have another operation when she is a teenager to replace the valve.

In addition to having her heart repaired, Amelia also had to have a the artery to her left arm (the subclavian artery) moved. It was unusually coming off the artery to her lung (left pulmonary artery) and had to be repositioned to where it should have been formed, on the aorta. This was a straight forward procedure and carried out successfully. The way Amelia's artery was formed is unconnected to her Tetraolgy of Fallot.

Hope this all makes sense! It's taken a year for me to get my head around it all, so if you got that all in one go you've got a good Biology brain!

Thanks for taking the time to read this extra long post.

xxx