When expectant mother Caitlin Veitz attended a routine 20 week ultrasound, she and her husband Brian were expecting to find out if their baby was a boy or a girl. But instead her and her husband Brian were given some shocking news – their baby daughter’s little heart was growing outside of her chest.
Their baby girl had a rare congenital heart defect (CHD), ectopia cordis, that affects only one in every 100,000 babies. Although CHDs are the most common birth defect of all, occurring in nine in every 1,000 births, ectopic cordis is the rarest form and is lethal - 95 per cent of babies with ectopic cordis die within a week of being born and 90 per cent pass away within three days.
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