Lexington Baby Born with Heart Defects Traveling to California for Surgery

When Arnold and Hayley Owino took their baby boy home from the hospital in July 2012, they thought he was a perfectly healthy child. 

But just a few weeks before his first birthday, they found out their son, Gordon, was born with three life-threatening heart defects.

The doctors told them that Gordon has an enlarged heart with a quarter-sized hole between the left and right ventricles, no functional use of his deformed pulmonary artery and no pulmonary valve. 

The doctors also told them Gordon has three angel hair pasta-sized arteries supplying minimal blood to his lungs and making it hard for him to breathe. 

It was Gordon's trouble breathing that first caused alarm for his parents and led doctors to diagnose him with heart defects.

Hayley, Gordon and Gordon's brother, Max, were spending a quiet afternoon at the beach at the Lake Murray dam when Hayley noticed that Gordon was very lethargic, which was unusual for the baby boy. Later, she and her husband noticed he was having trouble breathing. 

After a trip to Urgent Care, then to the emergency room, chest x-rays and an echocardiogram, Hayley and Arnold got the news that their baby boy had heart defects. He was later transferred to the Medical University of South Carolina. 

The family is traveling to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford in California Wednesday. A surgery for Gordon is schedule for Aug. 21. 

The family has set up a fundraising site to pay for medical and travel expenses for Gordon.

"We have been truly blessed and humbled by the outpouring of love and support we are receiving," Hayley and Arnold wrote on the site. "Please continue to pray that his surgery will be successful and he will receive a second chance to live the life God has planned for him and our family."

Visit Gordon's CaringBridge site to follow his journey.