Oconee second-grader now thriving after difficult early start in life

BOGART, Ga. - Locklyn McFarlin of Bogart is a healthy, happy 9-year-old.

Her mother, Lindy McFarlin, says she loves music and loves to dance.

"She loves anything that involves her sister, her baby sister," McFarlin says.

Lindy and Kevin McFarlin say they learned Locklyn had down syndrome shortly after she was born.

"We opted out of the actual testing for genetic testing just because it's a child of God, and that's our religious beliefs," Lindy McFarlin says.

But throughout her pregnancy, Lindy says, she had dreams about Locklyn.

"I was having dreams that I was going to have a special needs child," she says. "I kept feeling it in my heart that we were just going to have a special needs child."  

Hours after Locklyn's birth on June 26, 2014, her parents were alerted to another complication.

"We also got the diagnosis of a congenital heart defect, which is called atrial ventricular septal defect," Lindy McFarlin says.

That was a harder diagnosis.

"With the health issue of the heart, it just sort of added another layer of, 'Oh, this is going to be a different, different road; I didn't expect this,'" Kevin McFarlin says. "So, there was a little bit of that grieving of changing, changing your path."

Doctors at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta told the McFarlin's that Locklyn would eventually need two open-heart surgeries to repair her heart issues, but they wanted to wait until she was older to get started.

And, there was another problem: another congenital defect that was harder to spot.

"She constantly was having issues, you know, just kind of clearing her nasal passages and breathing," Lindy McFarlin says.

Locklyn was diagnosed with unilateral choanal atresia, meaning one side of her passages was completely blocked.

Dr. Anita Deshpande, a pediatric otolaryngologist with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, says babies breathe through their noses, and the blockage was making it harder for Locklyn to get enough oxygen, which was putting additional pressure on her heart and lungs.

"So, if a baby is not able to breathe easily, that can cause, you know, pulmonary hypertension, heart strain," Dr Deshpande says. "I kind of describe it as elevated pressures in the blood vessels of your lungs."

The breathing complications led to a change in plans.

"Essentially, she was in heart failure," her mother says. "It was one of those things that the doctors felt like, we need to go ahead and get this fixed before we go into a major heart surgery, where she's going to have to be intubated. We want to give her the best chance to survive that heart surgery."

So, that's what they did.

When she was 15-months-old, Locklyn had surgery to open her blocked nasal passage.

Then, three months later, breathing more normally, she had her first of two open-heart surgeries.

It's been a long road.

But, the McFarlin's say they have found a supportive community, and Locklyn, now in second grade, is thriving.

"She's very fun-loving," Lindy McFarlin says. "She loves everyone. She loves unconditionally."