San Diego Baby Photographer

Lifestyle session

Baby Philip 4 months old

This is probably the most important blog I’ve ever posted. As a San Diego Baby Photographer I meet a lot of babies, but this one touched my heart in a special way.
Please meet sweet baby Philip. Philip was born on February 9th, 2016 with a serious heart defect called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS).  To summarize what the condition is, the normal heart has two pumping chambers. HLHS hearts only have one pumping chamber. The left side of the heart did not develop. More information about this Syndrome you can find here. The syndrome was diagnosed on 18th week of pregnancy. Doctors were giving parents a 50% survival rate at that time.

With this condition it is not possible to survive without intervention: baby Philip was going to receive a series of open-heart surgeries. Often a child ends up with a heart transplant that courses its own problems. There is no cure! The surgeries do not correct the heart. Surgeons reconstruct the heart to change the blood flow to pump directly to the lungs for oxygen. Therefore, forcing the right side of the heart to do the work of both sides.

The surgery is divided into 3 surgeries. First, one was done when Philip was 2.5 days old. The second surgery baby Philip got when he is 4 months old right after we did this lifestyle session.  And the third will be done between 18 months and 5 years. Normal oxygen levels are 98-100% in most people. When resting, Philip’s highest levels are 85%. They can drop into the 60s when he is active. After his 3rd surgery, they estimate his levels to go up into the 90s.

Many different people were encouraging parents not to keep the baby. But parents didn’t consider that as an option.

We did this lifestyle session right before baby Philip had his second open-heart surgery. Doctors wanted to monitor Philip all day, that’s why he spends about a month before the surgery in the hospital. During this time mom was spending every single day in the hospital. She wanted to make sure her baby boy gets lots of cuddles and hugs.
Two big sisters were coming to the hospital as well to spend couple hour with baby brother.

Their favorite part was when they were holding baby brother and it was the heartmelting scene to watch.  As San Diego Baby Photographer I get to watch sibling hugs a lot.  However, this was one of the cutest.

Meanwhile dad was spending some quality time with big sisters. Sasha is 4 and Mila is 2. And look at this dad! He has his Super Man shirt for a reason. They showed me some of their special fun tricks and girls had a blast playing with dad.

Then dad takes over to put baby Philip to sleep.  In the meantime, mom had some quality time with girl. It was so great to see how every day mom was making sure girls are not bored during hospital stay. Every day they were coloring, playing with puzzles and many other things to keep them busy.

Philip is 6 months old now. He spent most of his life at the hospital. Doctors already did two open-heart surgery and a Cath procedure. Baby Philip had 5 full anesthesias and a lot of other procedures. Every day Philip takes a lot of different medicine daily and will be taking it all his life.

Right now Philip is doing great even though his heart function is really bad. Doctors changed his treatment course for now. They are going to wait for the first symptoms of heart failure and put him on the heart transplant list and do a heart transplant. When it will happen nobody knows!

Baby Philip is such a little fighter. He is too little to understand what he went through yet. But every day he has such huge support and enormous love from everybody who surrounds him.
So for now family tries to live a full life every second that he has!