We were devastated that our long awaited son would not be the perfect one of which we had dreamed. We were told that we were lucky because Trevor had no heart problems, as many children with Down Syndrome do have problems. When we took Trevor home a few days later, we began to study and learn all that we could about Down Syndrome. We took Trevor back to the doctor w hen he was 10 days old for a check up, and to our dismay a heart murmer was detected.

The pediatrician advised us not to worry. He said that it was only a slight murmer, and would most likely correct itself as Trevor grew. As a precaution, since Trevor did have Downs, we were referred to Texas Children's Hospital cardiology dept for an echocardiogram. The test that should have taken about 45 minutes, took over three hours so we knew that something was wrong. We were advised that instead of a small hole in his heart, our precious Trevor had a gross abnormality called Tetrology of Fallot. The cardiologist explained that this meant that Trevor had 4 birth defects to his tiny heart. The docs office was full of broken hearts that day, as not only did we find that our son had a broken heart, but ours broke for the second time in two weeks. Funny thing was that once we found out about Trevor's heart problems, we just seemed to put all of the hurt over the Down Syndrome on the back burner as it no longer seemed nearly as important as before.

The doctors told us that Trevor would require extensive corrective surgery for his heart, but he was too small and would have to grow before the surgery could be performed. We were told to take Trevor home, and to try to keep him from becoming too tired or upset because this would make his oxygen saturation levels drop to dangerous levels.

Well, needless to say we were terrified and mystified. How exactly does one keep a newborn infant from crying? We learned in a hurry to anticipate and fill Trevor's wants and needs before he became upset about them. Because Trevor had Down Syndrome, he had extremely small nasal passages and floppy airways. Because of this, Trevor had trouble breathing correctly, especially at night. We were referred to an ENT to have this problem checked. Again we went to Texas Childrens for this exam. When the doctor placed drops in Trevor's throat to begin the exam we had trouble.

True to form, our little man went into a Tet spell and became very blue. The only problem was that this time we could not bring him out of the spell, and he ended up in complete respiratory failure. Luckily we were rushed over to the ER, where we were met by a cardiac team who revived our angel. From there we went directly to Pedi ICU for the next 9 days to try to build Trevor up enough to withstand a temporary surgery. Finally it was done, and Trevor was given a modified BT shunt which would reroute some of his blood to his lungs for oxygen until he could grow enough to have corrective surgery.