For Teddy!
In his mom's words...
Our Teddy was born with a complex heart defect. He has what is considered to be a single ventricle, sometimes referred to as having "half a heart". We first discovered something was different about Teddy at our 20 week anatomy ultrasound and we entered the unpredictable world of having a child with CHD.
Within Teddy's first 6 months of life, he underwent two palliative open heart surgeries, the first at 4 days old and the second just shy of 4 months.
Since then he has been fortunate to stay out of the hospital and thrive, checking in twice yearly with his cardiac team. He is now 4 years old and doesn't let his heart condition define him. He loves baseball, Spiderman, and is the family goofball. Often times doing anything for a laugh, one cannot help, but smile even when he's mischievous.
Part of having a single ventricle heart is needing a minimum of 3 surgeries to fix circulation. For this, he will be undergoing his third ( and hopefully last) surgery in April of 2025 called the fontan. Children with fontan circulation can live to their 30s, but ultimately these kids will need a heart transplant at some time in their life. We hope that day is very far in the future, but in the meantime, we have learned to live in the moment and celebrate every milestone, no matter the size.