Pericardial Hemangioma

I am 21 years old and got pregnant in March. At this time, I was living in Colorado. When we found out I was just three months shy of my 21st birthday, in July. We were instantaneously shocked. We had been dating for two years and I was happy and nervous at the same time. We were unhappy with our living situation and knew that bringing a baby into that sort of environment was not a good decision. So, I got into contact with my father, whom lived across the country, and we decided we were going to take a road trip there in a month. In June, we left part of my family and all of his family and set on the road to Maine. When we got here, we were ecstatic at the change in environments. I was now living in such a peaceful and good natured home. I didn’t have my first appointment until midway through June and that’s when I found out that I was further along than they had thought. They scheduled my echo, but having problems with insurance I had to postpone it until I was 24 weeks pregnant. When we got the echo done, the nurse looked at it and kept taking pictures, but wasn’t saying anything. This took about an hour. Then, she went and talked to someone and they came in to tell us that there was someone on the baby’s heart. It seemed like there was a tumor on the sac of the heart. I instantly felt my heart drop.

This led to us having echos to monitor the growth every week. When I was 31 weeks pregnant, my step-sister hosted my gender reveal and we found out it was a girl. I remember us just crying, feeling shocked and excited, also scared for her. Around 34 weeks, I was sent to Boston to be looked at. They told us that the outcome would be them removing it within the first week of her life. I had to come back at 39 weeks to be induced in Boston. I was induced for 18 hours, before she finally showed her beautiful head. After giving birth, I had a fourth degree tear. I was on bed rest for a few days and then I finally got to hold her. I was ecstatic. About two days later, our cardiologist told us that after doing some tests, he sees no reason for her to be in the NICU any longer and that she was doing much better than they thought she would. She was gaining weight. She was off her breathing tubes. She was the healthiest baby in the NICU... aside from this tumor. They did find out that the tumor was a Pericardial Hemangioma. Which means that it is a cluster of blood vessels attached to the main artery in the heart and it’s located on the sac. But they expected that it either goes away with time or that it gets removed, but they wanted to wait until she was better. So, her being born on December 6th, 2019. We got her home December 16th. And she got to spend Christmas with us. I cannot believe how we went from devastation at the news, to complete relief that she was going to be able to stay at home with us. She’s our little blessing and I cannot believe how lucky we got in such a situation that is so rare to begin with. ♥️♥️♥️