How It All Began

I am going to start at the beginning..........

In January of 2012 we learned we were pregnant with our fourth child. The honest truth is that we were not happy, 4 children was never in "the plan." I felt overwhelmed and that life would never be anything more than kids. I love my kids but was looking forward to the day they would all be in school and I could finally start my own career. I feel selfish saying it but it is the truth.

In May we had our ultrasound, I never ever let myself think that FINALLY we would be having a girl and we learned that sure enough it was another boy.

After my monthly visit to my doctor she told us that she wanted us to do another ultrasound because she just couldn't see all of the heart like she wanted. At the second ultrasound still the heart could not be seen. My doctor tried to reassure us that it was probably the position the baby was in but wanted us to see a Fetal Monitor Specialist just to be sure. At that visit the specialist said he was 90% sure there wasn't a problem and that he just couldn't see the heart well enough to determine if anything was wrong. He asked us if we wanted to just go ahead and see a cardiologist and we both felt that would be best. Before our cardiology appointment we were sent back to the specialists and saw a different one, he was wonderful, and he told us yes there was a problem he was just not sure how serious.

In August, the 8th to be exact, I will never forget that date we saw Dr. Patel. He is a pediatric cardiologist. He did an fetal echo (that lasted over an hour) and when he was done with tears in his eyes he turned to us and said,
"Your baby has Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome." To most parents a definition would be needed but to me I knew exactly what it was. For almost 2 years our family had been faithfully praying for littly Rylnn Riojas who also has HLHS. I felt like I had been punched in the face. So here is where our journey began.........