When Megan Wild delivered her son Luciano, she experienced not only childbirth but also a medical first.
During her delivery, doctors performed open heart surgery on Luciano in the first successful operation of its kind.
"I was really scared of what could happen because it's a lot of what ifs, and you don't know until the baby is there," Wild, 35, told ABC News chief medical correspondent and board-certified cardiologist Dr. Tara Narula in an interview that aired Friday on "Good Morning America."
Wild was 24-weeks pregnant with her first child when she and her fiance Luciano Reynaga learned their baby had a serious heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
The condition, a critical congenital heart defect, occurs when the left side of the heart does not form correctly during pregnancy, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"When you're pregnant, it's supposed to be like a really exciting time, and I felt like all that excitement turned to fear," Wild said of her reaction to the diagnosis.
Babies born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome typically require multiple surgeries in the first few years of life, but doctors discovered Wild and Reynaga's baby had an added complication: no communication between the right and left sides of the heart.
The complication limited the baby's chance of surviving long enough to make it to the first surgery, according to Dr. Sameh Said, chief of pediatric heart surgery at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital in Valhalla, New York, where Wild was treated.
Twins reunite after one undergoes rare heart surgeryGiven the diagnosis, Wild chose to proceed with a new and complex operation known as an EXIT procedure.
In an EXIT procedure, the baby is partially delivered and still attached to the umbilical cord, with the mother functioning as her baby's heart and lung machine so that doctors can perform procedures before the baby is fully born. In this case, while the baby was mid-delivery, doctors needed to perform open-heart surgery, fixing the communication between the baby's two sides of the heart, and then continue with delivery.
Said successfully performed the open-heart surgery during an EXIT procedure on Jan. 6, resulting in the birth of baby Luciano.
"It was successful, and also should open the pathway for other babies who have similar problems," Said said of the procedure.
Teen survives 18-hour heart surgery, celebrates turning 15Less than 24 hours after his birth, Luciano underwent the first in a series of staged heart surgeries.
Six weeks after his birth, Luciano is doing well and continues to recover, according to both Said and Wild.
"I'm very thankful for the doctors and for everybody here [at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital], that they saved him and they helped him come into this world," Wild said.
