My name is Nichole Mazurek I live in Tarentum Pennsylvania. I gave birth to a baby boy on Jan 17th, 2008. He was 7 pounds 9 ounces and 19.5 inches long. His name was Liam James Mazurek.

I had a very normal pregnancy with Liam. I had morning sickness and was very tired but nothing different from my last pregnancy. I found out I was pregnant when my daughter was 6 months old. We wanted our kids close together so we were very happy.

I went to my 39 week check up and my belly was measuring 2cm more than the week before, so the doctor sent me to have a sonogram the next day.  I was having the sonogram done and I could tell that the doctor was looking at something and measuring what looked like "spots" on the head.  Finally they told me that it looked like the baby had a haemorrhage but could not be sure, I had to be sent to a high risk hospital for a level two sonogram. I called my husband and my mom who was with our daughter and told them through my sobs. My husband met me and we went to Magee Women's hospital in Pittsburgh.

The doctor at Magee told us that the baby had Vein of Galen Malformation and the outcome did not look good. They explained what it was and how it happened, and they could not tell me the outcome until he was born.  I was admitted that day and had an echo done on his heart on the morning of the 17th.  His heart looked good except that it was enlarged.  I was induced at 11:30am and gave birth to beautiful Liam at 4:17pm. When the Doctor cut the umbilical cord he went into high output cardiac failure, they stabilized him and then he was taken to Children's Hospital 5 block away for tests. He had a MRI and at 9:00 am on Jan 18th he had his embolization done. He made it through, we went back to Magee to have some dinner and at 10:00pm we went back to Children's.  Liam was sent to have a MRI before we got there, we are still not sure what happened in the few hours after the embolization, but he was gone.  We held him for a few hours and at 2:00 am on Jan 19th we took him off life support. 

When our fog of grief had lifted a little we did some reading and called the doctors at the hospital for more information.  Liam's malformation was very large and he had a lot of atrophy of the brain according to the MRI, everything happened so fast we were never told the results of the MRI.  I can't say that we would not have done the embolization knowing this but we can say that we did everything we could. We were scared and sad and didn't know what to ask or expect.

I am glad that I found this web site it has made me feel some comfort knowing that we are not alone.