From Diagnosis to Recovery: How One Heart Mom Found Comfort in Community—and Clothing that Made a Difference
When Lauren found out she was pregnant in January 2024, she and her family had no idea the journey they were about to face. Everything seemed normal until her 20-week anatomy scan, when her doctors referred her to a cardiologist for a closer look at her baby’s heart.
An echocardiogram revealed that the tricuspid valve in her baby’s heart was closed or non-functional—a condition that severely restricted blood flow into the heart. His right ventricle was hypertrophied and under pressure. Doctors gently asked Lauren and her husband if they wanted to continue with the pregnancy, warning of potential complications and multiple surgeries after birth. Everything changed in that moment.
But hope arrived in the form of the Fetal Heart Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The team there gave Lauren and her family the confidence to move forward, sharing stories of other children who had walked this difficult path and made it through.
Lauren and her husband relocated to Philadelphia in July 2024 to prepare for weekly monitoring. On Labor Day, she gave birth to her son, John. Soon after, doctors placed a stent in his PDA to help his right heart grow. John remained in the hospital for nearly three weeks. His care involved constant monitoring—weighing, checking his pulse and oxygen saturation, and preparing for the next step. By November, it was clear that the right ventricle wasn’t growing as hoped. CHOP scheduled a bidirectional Glenn procedure—John’s first open heart surgery—for January 17.
Her mother-in-law had gifted her two Magnetic Me footies before John was born. Lauren packed them in her hospital bag without knowing just how meaningful they would become.
“Magnetic Me is the best — it’s all I dressed him in. It’s the only brand that truly worked and made our tough hospital days easier on John.”
