We had seen two paediatricians and two GP’s and our babies heart defects (VSD and ASD) were sadly never picked up. One day, I followed mummy intuition and drove an hour and a half with my 12 week old boy to Melbourne Royal Children’s Emergency for another opinion. His only symptom: A baby failing to thrive. Sadly we were soon told our baby boy was in heart failure and would need life saving open heart surgery. Looking back I thought River was just a ‘fussy’ feeder, always pulling off crying, panting, sadly his body was running a marathon just to try and feed. He slept for hours at a time, but no one seemed concerned. Until I arrived late one Friday afternoon to emergency at The Royal Children’s.

They knew within in 10 minutes (even prior to having heart scans) something was wrong. He shouldn’t be loosing weight, he shouldn’t be breathing that fast etc.. Then we received the heartbreaking news from his cardiologist. They said if we had not come in that day, he wouldn’t have survived much longer than a couple of weeks. Within 24 hours, River was given a feeding tube and admitted to the Cardiac ward (koala ward). This was home for the next couple of weeks. His surgery was a success and thankfully only spent 3 days in ICU. He is now home, with regular check ups for the next few years. We will be forever in debt to the Doctors, Surgeons & Nurses at RCH for saving our baby boys life.