Like this:

The moment I entered the room and saw the doctor gliding an ultrasound probe across my newborn son’s chest, I knew something was wrong.

My twin boys had arrived the previous afternoon, delivered eight weeks early by Caesarean section. Everything had gone well, the boys were beautiful, and I went to bed on a wave of pure elation, as all new dads do.

The following morning, my new family was sucked into a whirlwind.

The doctor had seen enough. He turned away from the monitor he had been watching and came straight to the point. And how.

“I suspect your son has a heart condition. A big one.”

This after several antenatal scans at which he had told us perhaps there was a small hole in Charlie’s heart, one which might even close of its own accord over time.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. My son’s heart had formed minus one of the four valves through which our blood passes on its journey through the organ.

Without a pulmonary valve in place, Charlie’s blood had no way of reaching his lungs to receive oxygen.

The doc showed us a model of the heart, and how it should work. I was there in body but not in mind, unable to focus on his explanation.

The wheels were in motion, whether I was ready for this or not. A paediatric cardiologist was summoned from the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. He confirmed the diagnosis. Pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect. In other words, an unformed pulmonary valve and a hole in the wall between the heart’s two main pumping chambers.

We hadn’t yet given Charlie his name -  he was still plain old twin one. But already they were talking about surgery. Soon. And he would need more throughout his life.

We had questions, such as: Was he going to die? No, said the cardiologist. How could the scans have been so wrong? Probably because scanning twins is not easy – with one in the way, it’s hard to build a clear picture.

We were told to prepare ourselves for a long journey, with many ups and downs.

I decided to put the antenatal scans to the back of my mind. It was more important to focus on Charlie, and the operation he would soon go through.

But it wasn’t only Charlie who was making the doctors concerned. His brother George (twin boy Fletcher two) had heart block, or slow heart rate, signifying a potential problem with the heart’s electrical circuit.

For our first full day as parents, it was plenty to take in.

Advertisement