Thank you for visiting our team page! Every 15 minutes, a baby in this country is born with a congenital heart defect, making CHDs America's most common birth defect. The Congenital Heart Walk is dedicated to raising funds to support The Children's Heart Foundation's mission: to advance the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of CHDs by funding the most promising research.
Will you join us? By supporting our team or joining us in our walk, you're supporting research that will help save and improve the lives of babies born, and children and adults living, with CHDs.
Savannah's Story
At our 20 week ultrasound in August of 2019, we found out our first born had a congenital heart defect. The defect known as an AV canal, is a heart defect that involves the valves between the heart's upper and lower chambers and the walls between the chambers. Overall it is quite rare and accounts for 4% of heart defects diagnosed in children.
Our sweet baby, Savannah Rose, was born on December 23, 2019 and thrived beautifully at home for 7 months. Easily the most smiley and giggly baby you had ever met. On August 5, 2020, Savannah had open heart surgery to repair her severe valve regurgitation, holes in her heart and translocate a vein. Less than 24 hours after her surgery was complete, she went into cardiac arrest and our nightmare began. After about 5 weeks on various levels of life support, it was clear Savannah’s heart could no longer support her. She was in end stage heart failure and she would need a heart transplant. She remained on full life support for 5 and a half more months waiting for the perfect heart and sadly, it never came. She passed away, in our arms, at just 14 months old on February 22, 2021.
Although our little Heart Angel was on earth for only a brief time, she inspired so many with her strength and resilience. We will always cherish the days we had with her and our hope is that we can make her proud every day going forward as we fight to ensure no family in the future has to go through losing a child to a heart defect like we did.
We really believe it is our job as a heart family to grow awareness and do what we have to do to help families avoid the devastating diagnosis in the future. We hope to make Savannah proud as we fight to ensure no family, in the future, has to go through losing a child to a heart defect like we did.