Barrett's Birthday

Barrett Leo Schram was born at 12:24am on July 22nd 2026, weighing 8 pounds 3 ounces.

Since the very start of our journey with Barrett's diagnosis we knew that July 22nd would be his last day in the womb. Shannon's induction was scheduled very early on after his diagnosis and is a typical precaution - allowing these babies to go to full term can prevent them from receiving life-saving interventions necessary to prep them for a Norwood surgery.

In the spirit of keeping things unpredictable, Barrett decided to push that date forward one iota, and Shannon began laboring the morning of July 21st. What started as "the last day before baby boy" quickly became a classic "contractions in traffic" situation.

Shannon labored with Barrett for around 8 hours and was very close to a successful delivery, but as usual the boy had other plans for us. After several significant drops in his heart rate during contractions Shannon was rushed into a "stat" C-Section where Barrett was quickly brought into the world and stabilized with oxygen, but to everyone's excitement he quickly began breathing unassisted.

Afterwards he was transferred to the PCICU (Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit) for stabilization and his first post-birth imaging where we obtained the most detailed imaging of his heart to date. His images confirmed his in-utero diagnosis and left no surprises for the surgeons ahead of his upcoming Norwood procedure.