When first-time parents Urban and Tegan Paulo were told their son had a 7mm hole in his heart, the diagnosis opened up a whole new realm of frightening possibilities.

Archer was diagnosed with a ventricular septal defect at just six weeks old. It is a hole between the two lower chambers of the heart.

“We were only in the cardiologist’s office for mere minutes before being told it was a large hole and surgical intervention was required,” Ms Paulo said.

“(Our) initial thoughts were, ‘what could we have done to have caused this? Are we going to lose him? What will happen now?’”

At four months, Archer underwent open heart surgery to repair the hole in his heart that was making his little body work much harder than it needed to.

The surgery was an agonising wait of more than six hours, whi

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