Kuiper is an incredible baby boy who has been a blessing since the day his parents Justin and Valery found that their family of three was turning into a family of four. When the parents found out they were expecting another child the day before Easter in 2022, they were excited to tell their son, Brandon, who had been wanting a sibling. It felt like an Easter miracle.<\/p>\n
For months back and forth from visits and consultations there wasn’t any indication that there was anything wrong with Kuiper, he was a healthy baby boy. However, on October 19, that all changed. It was discovered that the healthy baby had Complete Atrioventricular Septal Defect (AVSD), a heart defect in which there are holes in the septum, the wall separating the right and left sides of the heart. This means that the two arteries that send blood to the body and the lung are fused together.<\/p>\n
The original plan was to wait until he was four to six months of age to correct the AVSD with surgery, a procedure to close the holes in his heart and go home after he was healed, and for the rest of his life have to see a specialist to make sure the patches stayed in place. Sadly, his heart had other plans. As the weeks went by, his heart function slowly declined. His breathing got worse.<\/p>\n
For a few weeks his health was getting better to the point they thought that he would be able to go home and the Belt family would all be together at last. He was off supporting breathing, but that all changed when he got RhinoVirus, a strain of the common cold. The progress and all the excitement of finally leaving the hospital went away when the amazingly strong little Kuiper Belt was put on a ventilator to give his poor lungs a break. It was then it was decided that he would officially be put on the heart transplant list.<\/p>\n
As part of getting put on the transplant list he needed a Heart Catherization. When they did the procedure, they learned Kuiper had four-hundred percent more blood going to his lungs than the rest of his body. In a normal person the ratio is 1:1. With the newfound data they worked to get him into surgery to limit the blood to his body. This surgery, called a Pulmonary Artery Banding, was going to take some strain off of his lungs, so he could breathe on his own again.<\/p>\n
After the surgery, Kuiper is still weaning off of the sedatives today.<\/p>\n
The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation’s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA’s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kuiper is an incredible baby boy who has been a blessing since the day his parents Justin and Valery found that their family of three was turning into a family of four. When the parents found out they were expecting another child the day before Easter in 2022, they were excited to tell their son, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforkuipersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}