MIDLOTHIAN, Va. — February is American Heart Month, and a Midlothian mom is using her daughter's journey to raise awareness about congenital heart defects.
One in every 100 babies is born with a congenital heart defect. That includes Leah Bandoni's eight-month-old daughter Josie.
At 23 weeks pregnant, Bandoni learned her daughter had Transposition of the Great Arteries, along with Ventricular Septal Defect and Pulmonary Stenosis.
The diagnosis came as a shock to the second-time mom who says she knew about congenital heart defects but never expected her child to have one.
"I feel like it's put a lot of things in perspective, and it makes me worry a lot less about other things," Bandoni said.
Because she was considered high risk, Bandoni gave birth to Josie at UVA Children's Hospital.
"When she was born, there was probably 25 doctors in the room," she explained. "It was like the entire NICU team, the entire cardiology team, like 5 OBs, MFM, maternal fetal medicine. There was so many people in the room, and I was able to hold her for a couple of minutes, but then they like immediately had to take her away."
Josie had a cardiac catheter placed at 3-hours old and her first surgery to repair her heart at just 10-days old.
She spent 20 days in the pediatric intensive care unit after birth, which was extremely challenging for the Bandonis. Since then, Josie has been thriving at home.
"She's growing and doing like everything that a normal baby would do," Bandoni said. "So I think like just keeping all of that positivity and like just focusing on that is what helps me like get through all of it."
The Bandonis say Heart Month looks different for them this year, and they want to remind other families facing congenital heart defects that they aren't alone.
"I had no idea how common it was, and I never would have thought that it would have affected us," Bandoni said. "You know, I'd had genetic testing and things like that during the pregnancy, so I think it just came up like complete shock. But now, I feel like I know everything about it, and I'm really big into like just the research and understanding all of it. So I think if you are confronted with something like this, just do as much research as you can and feel all the emotions that you have to feel."
The Bandonis are able to manage Josie's care with a baby aspirin a day for now, but she will undergo a full repair surgery at Boston Children's Hospital in April.
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