Facilitator , Phoenix, Arizona

Hi my name is Gennie Contreras. My husband Isidoro and I have been married for 7 years. In about November of 1999 we decided to start trying to have another child. We had a 3 year old at the time, and we had just bought our first home, so we figured the timing was right. We ended up getting pregnant in about April of 2000. My pregnancy was fine up until I was about 28 weeks. I had developed a condition called polyhydramnios, which is too much amniotic fluid surrounding the baby. I was put on bed rest, and many tests were given to try to determine if our daughter had any birth defects that would cause the polyhydramnios. It was determined that she didn’t have any of the birth defects that could possibly cause that condition, so I was just one of the 50% that got the condition without an actual cause. On December 30, 2000 our daughter Elysia Isabel Contreras was born. She was the most beautiful thing! She was checked thoroughly for any defects and she was perfect, so we thought. We took her home New Year’s Eve, and we had two nights with her at home. On January 2, she stopped responding to us. We would change her diaper or try to stimulate her and she would just lie there whimpering. My husband called 911, and we were transported to the hospital. She was put on a breathing machine while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with her. They thought she had got an infection through her body and blood. It wasn’t until around 3 am on the 3rd that we were told it was something that had to do with her little heart. They did an echocardiogram and it was determined that she had a congenital heart defect called coarctation of the aorta. The doctors tried to stabilize her to perform heart surgery, but we were never able to reach that point. At 2:30 am on the morning of the 4th we had to make the hardest decision of our lives. We decided to pull her from life support; we didn’t want her to suffer any longer.

Along with our first child Dominic Xavier, who is now 6, we had a subsequent child born 2/22/02 named Sophia Elyse. We are currently expecting another child due in September.