Think about this sentence:

Congenital Heart Defects are not always found during pregnancy or at birth, many are not found till childhood, adolescence, adulthood, or after death when it is to late.

This is why, we believe that every baby needs an echocardiogram and/or a pulse oximetry before they leave hospital to save lives of babies and to prevent babies who have heart abnormalities getting so ill before it's detected.

We are campaigning for the need for every baby to have a routine test whether it is an echocardiogram or pulse oximetry testing, or both within 24 hours after they're born.

Most babies appear healthy at birth yet soon after they get home things can change dramatically, the lucky ones are the ones who survive, and yet many babies still die unnecessarily. We want every baby to have an echocardiogram or pulse oximetry test, or both before they leave hospital as part of the routine exam to save the lives of our babies.

If you feel you would like to join this page just to raise awareness or because you have had experiences with this please do so and get your friends to join too.

As mentioned previously, there is also other ways to help check babies after birth for CHD:

1) feotal echocardiogram, and

2) the pulse oximetry testing(for further information see page titled Newborn Screen for Congenital Heart Defects: Pulse Oximetry

We support both ways and still feel that an echocardiogram after birth is needed as it'll help detect CHD that the 20 week scan might still miss.

We are currently waiting to hear about the results of PULSE OXIMETRY TESTING (there is currently a trial being carried out in a Birmingham Hospital, England to see whether this is a reliable way of testing for CHD after birth. We know that an echocardiogram is.

To see what it looks like when you have an echocardiogram click on this link:http://www.heartsite.com/html/echocardiogram.html