FARGO — A south Fargo couple is preparing for the historic birth of their second child. Historic, because all top doctors and specialists in the region said the odds of a second child being born with a complicated heart condition, was off the charts; it would never happen. Then, it did.
"What are you doing, buddy," Greg Mitchell playfully asks his son, Harvey. 18-month old Harvey will turn any gray, rainy day into a giggly, dinosaur-filled play date with mom and dad. "What do dinosaurs say, roar?" Piper Mitchell asks her son.
Harvey came into the world like a storm. "They said, from what we can see, there is nothing wrong, but we will double check," Piper said of their early ultrasound of Harvey. It turns out, Harvey had a heart defect.
His plumbing was all confused in that heart. "Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) ," Piper said of the diagnosis. Harvey needed his first heart surgery shortly after he was born.
"He was three days old," Piper said of Harvey's first surgery. Now, Harvey is doing well, another surgery down the road. First he has to wait for baby brother Alden to be born in early November, and baby Alden will make history.
"We talked to the doctors and cardiologists and the geneticists ," Piper said of the conversations with specialists in the region about having a second child. According to all the doctors and medical experts in the Twin Cities and Fargo who Greg and Piper Mitchell worked with, there was little to no chance a second child would be born wit.