One brave little girl. Cory Wharton and Taylor Selfridge’s infant daughter, Maya, who was born with a congenital heart defect, is recuperating after a nerve-racking hospital stay.
“So you guys know I like to be honest with you 💯 & usually you always talk about your good days, but it has been a very long day,” the Challenge alum, 31, wrote via his Instagram Story on Thursday, October 20. “We had to bring Maya back to the emergency room. She wasn’t getting enough oxygen and was struggling to breathe.”
Wharton added: “Watching your child struggle for air is such a helpless feeling. Never again, I pray. But now, she is stable. 🙏 ❤️.”
The Teen Mom OG personality — who coparents daughter Ryder, 5, with ex Cheyenne Floyd — welcomed his third little girl earlier this year, his second with Selfridge, 28. (The reality TV alum and his partner also share 2-year-old daughter Mila.)
“Maya Grace Wharton,” Wharton captioned a June Instagram post, announcing his newborn’s arrival before revealing her tricuspid atresia diagnosis.“Don’t really know how to start this off there’s sooo much I wanna say, so much I’ve felt over the past week. As a parent you’re, scared, worried, nervous, angry, sad, mad & you don’t understand why this is happening to your baby.”
Tricuspid atresia is a heart defect that interferes with the organ’s ability to pump blood, requiring multiple surgeries to repair it. Maya has already undergone two open-heart procedures since her birth.
“She’s so brave, we love you so much lil queen,” Wharton captioned a second Instagram Story post on Thursday, sharing footage of Maya wearing an oxygen mask while riding in an ambulance. “You can tell she’s nervous but she’s [calm] under pressure like her daddy.”
He added: “This lil girl has been through so much already but you can see she’s calm and stable. [I’m] just praying it doesn’t get worse. I just feel bad [because] you can see it in her eyes [that] she’s scared.”
Maya’s hospital visit comes two days after her second open-heart surgery. Doctors performed a right and left heart catheterization with angiography on Tuesday, October 18, using plastic tubes in the heart to measure the pressure and oxygen levels.
“This is the next step, we’ve known about this procedure for a while now, after this one she has her big open heart surgery at the end of the month,” Wharton captioned a Tuesday Instagram update. “We’re taking it one day at a time one procedure at a time, but on the right track.”
