Samantha Wade risked her life to have a baby.
After losing her first child Xavier at two days old and requiring intensive care herself following his premature delivery, doctors warned her that falling pregnant again could kill her, given her history of heart complications.
Before she had even seen her newborn son, who was delivered at just 25 weeks' gestation, a medical specialist told her: "You're never to have any more children."
"I kind of had to mourn the loss of him but also mourn the loss of — I would never be able to have another pregnancy," Mrs Wade said through tears.
"I was depressed, and I was suicidal. I ended up having all my maternity leave off just so I could heal and grieve."
But as the paediatric nurse mourned her son's loss, and recovered physically from the pregnancy, the ache to have another child never faded – despite the medical reservations.
The 29-year-old from Logan, south of Brisbane, was born with severe heart defects, including transposition of the great arteries – where the two main vessels carrying blood away from the heart are reversed.
She also had a hole in the wall that separates the two lower chambers of the heart and pulmonary atresia, a malformation of the valve that controls blood flow from the heart to the lungs.
Mrs Wade had a series of surgeries from when she was just two days old, to improve the function of her heart, including what's known as a Fontan procedure at age five.
'Everyone blamed my heart'
The open-heart operation involves re-directing oxygen-depleted blood directly to the lungs, rather than through the heart.
Heart specialists say women who fall pregnant after having a Fontan procedure in childhood can experience heart failure and arrhythmias during pregnancy.
They also have high rates of miscarriage and premature deliveries.
After marrying her "first love" Blake in September 2016, the couple consulted a pre-conception clinic – and Mrs Wade had a successful stress test on her heart — before she fell pregnant in 2019.
When the little boy they named Xavier was delivered 15 weeks early, in November of that year, and died two days later, Mrs Wade initially blamed herself.
But testing of her placenta also revealed the baby, who weighed just 600g at birth, had developed an e-coli infection in the womb.
"Everyone kind of blamed my heart," she said.
"No-one said anything about the infection.
"My nursing brain always kept saying: 'What about the infection? The infection had to play a role."
What was in less doubt was the toll the pregnancy and birth had taken on her body.
She spent days in intensive care with a condition called protein losing enteropathy – which results in the loss of proteins through the gastrointestinal tract – a complication linked to the Fontan procedure.
Mrs Wade was also treated for heart failure for months after Xavier's delivery.
But despite the traumatic experience, about a year after Xavier's birth, she started consulting a different team of specialists, this time at Mater Health, to try for another baby.
"I always knew if I didn't try again, I would regret it," she said.
"I've always been maternal. I've always wanted children.
"I was willing to risk everything if it meant I could give Blake the chance to be a dad again.
"He was the main drive to it because I just felt so guilty that he'd have missed that chance to be a dad and raising a child."
Cardiologist Mugur Nicolae admitted the Mater team took some convincing that it would be safe for Mrs Wade to deliver.
"She was sent as a second opinion. I tried to make it no, but I couldn't," he said.
"I said to her: 'You're still a very high risk.' I said: 'You realise you may actually die?' It's up to you."
On the positive side, as a nurse, Mrs Wade was medically literate and her heart condition at that stage was "relatively stable".
"I was doing Pilates, doing hydrotherapy," she said.
"I really wanted to focus on preparing my body again, eating healthy."
A heroic team effort
In June, 2021 she had her contraceptive device removed and three months later, fell pregnant for the second time.
A specialist medical team at the Mater — including Dr Nicolae, obstetrician Dr Leanne Chapman, maternal foetal medicine specialist Dr Glenn Gardener, anaesthetists Dr Sarah Maguire and Dr Michael Toon, obstetric physician Dr Jo Laurie, and others — began a collaboration they hoped would allow Mrs Wade to deliver a healthy baby.
Five weeks into her pregnancy, she gave up work to lessen the risk of developing another infection.
After the pregnancy survived an early threatened miscarriage, she had a stitch inserted in her cervix at 14 weeks.
Then, at 20 weeks, she started taking Viagra – a drug better known as a treatment for erectile dysfunction in men.
Dr Nicolae prescribed it to Mrs Wade hoping it would increase blood flow to her placenta.
"We believe that the placenta in Fontan patients is not quite normal," he said.
"There is high pressure in the veins because of the Fontan and that affects the placenta as well."
Doing research of her own, Mrs Wade successfully sought approval of her medical team to start supplemental oxygen at home about halfway through the pregnancy to ensure the baby was getting as much oxygen as possible.
"We organised home oxygen and I sat sucking oxygen for 18 to 20 hours a day," she said.
"When I was asleep or if I was just sitting down resting, I'd have it on. I sat at home and binged a lot of TV."
Mrs Wade was admitted to the Mater Mothers' Hospital during her 32nd week of pregnancy after developing pain in her abdomen.
A scan showed her baby had stopped growing, she had "fluid overload" and her medical specialists suspected she may be developing protein losing enteropathy again.
'Light of God'
At 5:02pm on May 2, 2022, Queensland's Labour Day holiday, Ziva Elizabeth Wade was born by emergency caesarean, weighing 1,700 grams. She was not quite 34 weeks' gestation.
Ziva – which means Light of God – went to the neonatal intensive care unit but was healthy despite her prematurity.
Mrs Wade spent a night in the hospital's intensive care unit but only as a precaution.
She agreed to have her fallopian tubes removed after Ziva's birth to eliminate any chance of another pregnancy.
"We don't need to risk having any more," she said.
She and Blake were able to take Ziva home on May 25 last year – just over three weeks after her birth.
"I don't think we blinked the whole drive home," Mrs Wade said.
"We just kept staring at her.
"We just walked through the door and we just broke, we both cried that we had finally, after so long, brought a baby home."
More than a year later, the devoted mum and dad are enjoying their "sassy" little girl.
"It's sad that we don't have Xavier and we miss him every day," Mrs Wade said.
"But without going through what we went through with him, and learning what we learnt with him, she would never be here.
"I'm so grateful for him. And she'll know who her brother is."
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiXWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIzLTA3LTMwL2NoaWxkYmlydGgtcHJlZ25hbmN5LW1lZGljYWwtaGVhcnQtY29uZGl0aW9uLzEwMjY1NjQwNtIBAA?oc=5
2023-07-29 21:29:47Z
CBMiXWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIzLTA3LTMwL2NoaWxkYmlydGgtcHJlZ25hbmN5LW1lZGljYWwtaGVhcnQtY29uZGl0aW9uLzEwMjY1NjQwNtIBAA
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Queensland mum born with severe heart defects 'risks everything' to have a baby - ABC News"
Post a Comment