Our love only grew for each other with every appointment. We decided it was only right for us to tie the knot, so we started looking at venues and I even went dress shopping. We had told our families that we had decided on a date and visited a few places we really liked. Rich and I visited our OBGYN and she assured us that what was found during the anatomy scan was most likely nothing. On August 15th, Rich and I went to the first of many echocardiograms and over 100 images of our baby’s heart were taken. Eventually, we sat down with a pediatric cardiologist and she started to draw a picture of a heart and all the vessels. She started talking about the findings— dilated aorta, dilated pulmonary artery, dilated umbilical vein, PDA, VSD, ASD… and my world fell apart. I was uncontrollable and it all felt like a nightmare. Rich held me all while asking what all of this meant. We were told that our baby most likely had an extremely rare connective tissue disorder (CTD), but it could be a bicuspid value or idiopathic (these two weren’t as likely as CTD). I couldn’t process. I couldn’t get a word out. I cried and cried while Rich kept firing away with questions. We spent hours in the hospital that day, but little did we know this was just the beginning. The cardiologist advised us to consult with genetics and recommended an amniocentesis.

A few days later, my mom suggested I go talk to an adult cardiac surgeon she works with. She wanted me to understand what we were getting ourselves into. He sat me down and told me put a lot of thought about keeping my baby. He said he treats adults with heart diseases and the life they live, if any, is very difficult. I broke down and when Rich saw me, he knew I was a mess. The car ride home was quiet and so were the next three weeks. As soon as we got home, we laid in bed and just cried until eventually we both fell asleep.