If you are here, that means you know Trenton and I are parents to our angel congenital heart disease(CHD) baby, Sutton Jay Harrington. Did you know that 1 out of 100 babies is born with a CHD? Sutton’s specific diagnosis is about 1 out of 10,000 babies. Sutton had double outlet right ventricle with d-malposed great arteries with pulmonary stenosis. This means that he had both major arteries (pulmonary and aortic) coming off the right ventricle with a small left ventricle (hypoplastic left heart syndrome) with restricted blood flow to the lungs. We found this out during our 20 week anatomy scan. Our baby lived 8 amazing days, and we would do anything to have just one more.
Before Sutton, I’ve heard of CHD’s but it has never impacted me directly. Now, I am an advocate for helping to raise awareness and funds to support research so that one day no parents will have to know the pain of saying goodbye to their baby. The Children’s Heart Foundation takes our donations and does just that. Their mission is “To advance the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of congenital heart defects (CHDs) by funding the most promising research.” All of their donations go directly to congenital heart defect research.
I am hoping our local friends and family will donate and join us in the walk in honor of Sutton. The walk is Saturday, September 21st, 2024 at Warner Park (50 Vaughn Road, Nashville, TN 37721). Registration begins at 9:30am, opening ceremony at 10:30am, and the walk begins at 11am. The walk is about a mile long.
For others who don’t live local to Nashville, the same organization is doing walks in other states:
- Hersey, PA on April 27th, 2024
- St. Louis, MO April 13th, 2024
- Philadelphia, PA May 18th, 2024
- Pittsburgh June 23rd, 2024
- Detroit (Rochester) August 17th, 2024
- Grand Rapids, MI August 18th, 2024
- Denver, CO September 7th, 2024
- Washington DC October 26th, 2024
Also, not necessary but some of our family and friends got shirts from this Etsy page (https://www.etsy.com/.../chd-awareness-shirt-anatomical...) to wear at the event!
Thank you for visiting Sutton’s page. We hope to see you all there!