Our Appointment in Brisbane

Jess at 24 weeks

We have been waiting for this appointment. Finally we were going to go to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane to meet with a Paediatric Cardiologist! This was significant because we have been hoping to get a final answer on Riley's condition.
In the interim we have spent even more time googling stories of people who had been to the Mater Hospital for similar conditions trying to prepare ourselves for the kind of life we could be in for over the next year.
We were met by Dr Gooi (who I had been told looked like Jeff from the Wiggles) and began our scan, throughout the whole appointment we sat and watched Riley's special heart beating on the screen. Soon we were joined by a lady named Karen who is a Paediatric Cardiac Care Co-Ordinator; as the scan dragged on she kept our minds busy asking us questions about our lives and how we have been coping through the whole process.
Dr Gooi finished and let us know that Riley definitely has Double Inlet Left Ventricle with the Transposition of the Great Arteries; he even told us that only a week or two prior he had met with another couple who had the exact same thing (which is crazy because he said he only sees one or two cases like ours every year).
They sat us down in a counseling room to go through all the details of Riley's condition as well as some of the practical things we will face. He confirmed that we do need to stay in Brisbane a month before the birth (Mid-December) and we would end up staying in Brisbane for about 5-6 months across the two open heart surgeries she will be required to have.We knew that was coming but I guess it began to feel a little more real that we would be away from home for such a long period of time. The plan is for one surgery a few days after she is born, and then the second when she is about 4 months. 
Riley will need to be on the ward in the hospital the entire time that we are there which we were disappointed with. I guess we can blame google; we had read stories of families getting to take their baby home to their unit near the hospital and if anything went wrong they could just rush them back. But that isn't the case with the Mater.  The upside was that they let one parent stay the night in the hospital with their baby if they wanted to.
Following all of that they went through all the complications that could arise over the course of her life but there was some good news. We are blessed that she has the left side of her heart; it's stronger than the right and maintains consistent pumping and heartbeat. He also wasn't too concerned that she would have chromosomal abnormalities, there is still a chance but he said that Riley has had a few scans now and nothing has shown up that has them concerned. We breathed a sigh of relief on that one.
They spent over two and a half hours with us and we ended up walking away from our time with Dr Gooi & Karen feeling like we are in safe hands. We feel reassured that there is going to be a tonne of support there for us from the Midwives to the Doctors to other couples there who are going through the exact same situation. It will be a challenge for us to leave home for a while and live practically the whole time at the Hospital but we know that it's all going to be okay. We are believing that Riley is going to surprise everyone with how quickly she recovers, that she will be strong and will face every challenge head on.
Also we would just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been praying for our little girl; it's amazing that there is already so much love for a little girl that none of us have met yet. Your prayers have meant the world to us and we still need them.