Mum with heart problems has healthy baby thanks to medical science

Natalie Reeves was diagnosed at 18 with a hole in her heart. But close to 20 years later — thanks to medical science and a raft of specialists — she achieved her dream of having a baby.

Holding tight to the baby she was told she could never have, Natalie Reeves is the smiling face of a “tsunami of survivors” given a new chance at life though huge leaps in medical science.

At 18 she learned she had a hole in her heart the size of a 50-cent coin that ­required life-saving surgery and would leave her with little chance of having a normal life.

Doctors told her if she fell pregnant the child would not survive or she herself would die as her heart could not take the strain.

But, despite a second setback 12 years later that saw her diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, she defied all the odds last year and gave birth to ­Adeline in the middle of the pandemic.

“As soon as she arrived I saw she was OK, I saw she was doing well and it was a really wonderful moment,” Ms Reeves said.

“It was something I had wanted for so long and I thought I’d never have, so to have it go so well … it was a really wonderful.”

Natalie Reeves with her daughter Adeline after she was told as a teen she could never have a baby due to her heart issues. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Ms Reeves is one of thousands now living a healthy life who would once have been lucky to survive past their teens.

Her diagnosis was even more shocking given Ms Reeves only went to the doctor because she wanted to pull a sickie from uni, not because she was actually ill.

“I tried to get a day off uni ­because I had a paper due that day so because I needed a doctor’s certificate I went down to my local GP and said: ‘Oh, I’ve got a cough’,” she said.

“She  actually ended up saying: ‘I think I can hear something else, has anyone told you you had a heart murmur?’.

Natalie Reeves after giving birth to her baby Adeline.

Ms Reeves and her sister during her recovery from heart surgery.

“I thought: ‘That’s ridiculous’.”

Eight weeks later she was in surgery for an operation that would save her life. After another 12 years of setbacks, Ms Reeves needed several blood clots removed from her lung after being diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.

It came at a time when Ms Reeves said she was thinking about starting a family, talking with her sister about how they both wanted to fall pregnant and raise their kids at the same time.

An army of medical experts ­finally gave her the green light to try for a baby in a “last-ditch ­attempt” thanks to the successful surgery.

In total, Ms Reeves needed an obstetrician, an endocrinologist, a cardiologist and a haematologist all on deck and monitoring her closely throughout the pregnancy and labour.

“We were thinking about a family and babies at the time because all of my friends were having kids,” she said.

“But you’ve got a bunch of doctors saying: ‘Unfortunately you’ve got this condition and you can’t have kids’, it was really difficult and something that took a long time to come to terms with.

“The flip side is coming out the other end having a surgery that went as successfully as possible and then working with a team of doctors to help me through it to the point where it became a reality again, which was something I had resigned myself to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen.”

Associate Professor Rachael Cordina. Dr Cordina is a clinical academic cardiologist with a special interest in adult congenital heart disease as well as maternal cardiology, exercise physiology, Indigenous health and pulmonary hypertension.

In the end, Ms Reeves achieved her dream of having a child with her sibling at the same time when her sister fell pregnant with her fourth baby, out of the blue, a decade after her third.

Associate professor Rachael Cordina, of The Heart Research ­Institute, said that while cases such as Ms Reeves’s were becoming more common, there needed to be an extra focus on helping the now adults live with their condition.

Congenital heart disease is still the biggest killer of babies in ­Australia.

“There are actually more adults in Australia living with these condition than kids,” Dr Cordina said.

“When the community thinks of congenital heart disease they think of little cute kids with a scar on their chest, but now there is a wave of survivors living with some of the most complex defects.

“It’s more like a tsunami of adult survivors now.”

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