'The clock ticks' 
 
 In most cases, newborn babies with heart defects can be rushed from the neonatal unit at Mount Sinai Hospital to the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) across the street, says Dr. Rajiv Chaturvedi, a cardiologist at SickKids. "This is a life-threatening condition that could result in rapid brain damage, with the baby doing very poorly and dying from this," Jaeggi explained. Now weighing 10 pounds and meeting all his developmental milestones, Sebastian is like any other healthy two-month-old, his parents say. Scans of Sebastian while in his mother's womb showed his aorta, the vessel that takes oxygen-rich blood to the brain and body, and his pulmonary artery, which channels blood to the lungs to be oxygenated, were switched -- a condition known as transposition of the great arteries, or TGA. Barry said her first thoughts were “Why me, why my baby?” To fix the problem, surgeons normally perform open-heart surgery on the infant to switch the arteries within a week of birth. That meant there would be little time to save Sebastian from severe complications after he left his mother's womb. Article Continued Below 
 
 All the walls in Sebastian’s heart were closed shut, meaning his blood wouldn’t get oxygen after his birth, which could have led to severe brain damage or death within minutes. Jaeggi said the team waited until Sebastian was almost full-term to do the in-utero surgery -- called a balloon atrial septoplasty, or BAS -- because doing so earlier might have allowed the hole to close up again. With neonatal and cardiac surgeons on standby in case an emergency cesarean section became necessary, the doctors used a needle to insert a balloon through Barry's uterus and into Sebastian's heart, making a small hole to open up the heart's interior wall, so oxygenated blood could pass through.  
 
 Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press 
 
 
 
 
 
 TORONTO -- Watching Kristine Barry and husband Christopher Havill cuddle their two-month-old son Sebastian, it's hard to believe their little guy has been through more major medical procedures in his short life -- and even before being born -- than many people experience in a lifetime. Barry was then transported to Sick Kids across the street via an underground tunnel that connects the two hospitals, where Ryan performed the next part of the procedure under ultrasound-guided imagery, inserting a fine needle through Barry's abdomen and uterus, then into the upper chamber of Sebastian's heart and passing it through the wall to the adjacent atrium. "He's a pretty calm, pretty chill baby. On May 23, Barry gave birth through a regular vaginal delivery after being induced and Sebastian was born "pink and screaming." But when Sebastian arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto in May, "there's this little guy all pink and screaming." "They always said that he was going to be blue and not vocal because of the lack of oxygen." Weeks before his birth in May, Toronto doctors discovered through imaging scans that Sebastian had not one, but two congenital heart defects -- and they knew they had to do something fairly radical to bring him into the world and give him a chance at a full and healthy life. “They want us to let him be a kid and run around and get his blood pumping and his heart working really well. They don’t want us bubble-wrapping him and being too protective,” Barry said.
– Doctors in Canada are patting themselves on the back after what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind heart surgery that saved the life of an unborn child. Halfway through her pregnancy, Kristine Barry of Barrie, Ont., learned her unborn son had a heart defect in which the two main arteries of his heart were reversed, reports the CBC. Putting the aorta and pulmonary artery in their rightful places would require open-heart surgery after birth. But because Barry's unborn son also had no opening to allow blood to flow between the upper and lower chambers of his heart, he would be unable to circulate oxygen through his body once separated from his mother's placenta, with brain and other organ damage occurring within minutes. "He likely wasn't going to make it," Barry, 25, tells the Toronto Star. But doctors weren't about to give up. In what may be the first balloon atrial septoplasty performed on a baby in the womb, doctors from Mount Sinai Hospital and Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto used a needle to insert a balloon through Barry's uterus and into the boy's heart, opening a passageway between the chambers. Five days later on May 23, Sebastian was delivered "all pink and screaming," rather than "blue and not vocal" as initially expected, Barry says. Two months after undergoing open-heart surgery to repair his heart defect, he's healthy and happy and Barry can't thank doctors enough. "It's just amazing what they're able and capable of doing," she tells the Canadian Press. (Read about another heart surgery in the womb.)