The Chavezes knew their baby, MJ, would need heart surgery from the moment she was born in June. Doctors expected her to have an operation around 6 months of age, but a month-long wait for a bed at their local children’s hospital pushed the procedure back.

Source: media.cnn.com

‘They said, ‘Well, we would love to get her in as soon as possible. However, right now, we don’t have beds,’ ‘

As of Friday, more than three-quarters of pediatric hospital beds and 80% of intensive care beds for kids were full, according to federal data. The strain on hospital beds began in August and September, coinciding with the start of the school year in many areas.

Hospitals Overwhelmed with Sick Infants and Children

Hospitals are seeing higher than normal numbers of sick infants and children due to a particularly early and severe season for respiratory infections in kids, including respiratory syncytal virus (RSV) and influenza.

Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, was over capacity, with 35% of its current patients – excluding those in the neonatal intensive care unit – having RSV. The hospital went from having 85% of its beds occupied in August to over 100% now.

A lack of available beds means patients are sometimes held in the emergency department to wait for a bed to open so they can be admitted. This also means children who have chronic conditions and need procedures or hospital care may have to wait.

MJ’s Heart Condition

MJ was born with a ventricular septal birth defect – a hole between the pumping chambers of her heart. Doctors could see the defect on prenatal ultrasounds, but because MJ was never in the right position to get a good image, they weren’t sure of its size.

Typically, babies will take a bottle for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, but MJ would doze off after six or seven minutes. Her parents thought she was just a sleepy baby, but they later realized she wasn’t eating enough.

Her parents were told MJ would need surgery to repair the hole in her heart around 6 months of age. However, once the feeding issues started, they realized she might not hit that mark.

They got a feeding tube when MJ was around 6 weeks old, but by the time she was 3 months old, her condition had deteriorated. Every breath came with a grunt, and she was sweating regularly, no matter the ambient temperature in the room or whether she was being held or not.

Her cardiologist first discussed getting MJ’s case reviewed on September 14. He said, ‘it might take a couple of weeks to get her in because we’ve been really slammed with emergencies, but we’ll get her in.’

However, at the end of September, MJ caught a cold, which worsened her condition. Her parents were told that there weren’t enough beds available for her surgery.

‘Throughout that time, she kept getting worse. More symptoms would pop up in terms of the breathing would get worse, the retractions would get worse, that kind of a thing. Like there was more and more and more piling up,’ Aaron said.

Her parents were worried that her condition wouldn’t stay stable, and they understood that the hospital was doing its best with the resources it had.