Transitional AV canal defect

I figure since it's getting to be towards the end of my pregnancy, I should probably write about my son's heart defect. I've been wanting to post about it for a long time, but just couldn't find the time to sit down and write, and truthfully it's not the happiest thing to think about so that's a big reason why I've been putting it off. He has a transitional atrioventricular canal defect. We found out at his 19 week ultrasound. It was a weird day, we were so excited to see our baby and to find out the gender and didn't anticipate anything else. They saw that he was a boy pretty much off the bat, and checked out some of his other parts, everything seemed to be okay - until they looked at his heart - the sonographer seemed to spend a very long time looking at it - then said that she was going to call one of the doctors and came back a couple of minutes later and told us that the baby has a heart defect and asked if we could drive to their other office that was in Chandler right away so the doctor over there could do an ultrasound and let us know what was going on. Even though it was just a few miles away, it seemed like such a long drive, I was in shock and my mind was racing the whole time. What was going on with my baby? We got to the other office and the doctor looked and told us it was either an AV canal defect or an atrial septal defect, but the baby wasn't in the best position so she couldn't tell which one it was for sure. She then referred me to a pediatric cardiologist who could look and let us know - but that appointment wouldn't be for 2 more weeks. When we went to the appointment at the pediatric cardiologist's office we learned our son had a transitional atrioventricular canal defect.

With my son's heart defect, he has a large hole in the lower part of his atrial septum, a very small hole in the upper part of his ventricular septum (which the dr. thinks may have closed up recently), and a very mild mitral valve leak. The holes in the septum of the heart allow the oxygen-rich blood and oxygen-poor blood in his heart to mix and more blood flows into the lungs than usually would - the heart has to work harder and becomes enlarged. If left untreated it causes congestive heart failure. The type of AV canal defect my son has is a rare subtype and the doctor says he probably wont need open heart surgery until he is around 2 years old. I'm hoping and praying that he is able to be as healthy as possible, and that the surgery will go extremely well when the time comes.