As Global Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Month takes place this February, the Donegal News spoke with Christine Callaghan from Dungloe, whose daughter Aran was diagnosed with congenital heart disease prenatally.
Christine and her husband Michéal Ó Bhaoighill discovered they were expecting identical twins during their first ultrasound.
The twins shared a placenta, which was unevenly split, leaving Aran with a smaller share than her sister Cobh. This left her umbilical cord lacking a vital blood vessel.
As a result, Christine’s pregnancy was closely monitored. Everything seemed to be progressing normally until the 16th week, when “things went downhill.”
“Cobh was making bigger leaps in the womb than Aran, so I was out in Letterkenny every two weeks, getting scans and keeping an eye on them,”…