Bipasha Basu says her daughter underwent open-heart surgery at three months old

PTI, Aug 6, 2023, 7:25 PM IST

Actor Bipasha Basu has said her daughter Devi was born with a ventricular septal defect and underwent open-heart surgery when she was three months old.

Basu welcomed her first child with husband-actor Karan Singh Grover in November 2022.

In an Instagram Live session with actor Neha Dhupia on Saturday, Basu said three days after she gave birth, the doctors told her that the child was born with two holes in her heart.

”Our journey has been different from any normal mother-father, it has been a lot tougher than the smile that I have on my face right now… I got to know on the third day of me having a baby that our baby is born with two holes in her heart. ”I thought I’ll not share this, but I’m sharing this because I feel that there are a lot of mothers who helped me in this journey, and it was very difficult to find those mothers…” the 44-year-old actor said.

Basu said she and Singh Grover were ”numb” when they found out about their daughter’s medical condition: ventricular septal defect or VSD, which is a birth defect of the heart in which there is a hole in the wall (septum) that separates the two lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart.

”We didn’t even understand what a VSD is. It is a ventricular septal defect… We went through a crazy period. We didn’t discuss this with our family, we both were in a little bit of a blur. ”We wanted to celebrate but we were a little numb, me and Karan… You feel so sad, burdened, and conflicted because how can you put such a small child in an open heart surgery,” she recalled.

The actor said it took her 40 days to process the reality.

”Out of those, 15 days Karan was not in the city with me because he had a film which he tried to back out from but he couldn’t. I was alone, I didn’t tell my family. She wasn’t allowed to meet anyone with a cold and cough, my whole family had viral at that time. I didn’t let anyone meet Devi. Everyone thought why I had gone weird, but I was being fiercely protective about my daughter,” Basu said.

The first five months were ”very difficult” for the newborn parents, she said. ”But Devi has been fabulous from day one. We were told that every month, we have to do a scan to know if it’s healing on its own. But with the kind of large hole that she had, we were told that it was doubtful, you will have to go through surgery. And the surgery is best done, when the child is three months old,” she added.

Terming the ordeal ”an isolating phase of my life”, the actor said she feels lighter after talking about it publicly.

”Now, we have just stepped into the normal scene. It feels so nice and light to just take her on a holiday, go to a friend’s house where she can play with animals freely,” she added.