A Binghamton woman will soon head to Congress to share her daughter's survival story. Elyse Mickalonis has more on one woman's mission to raise awareness for congenital heart defects.

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BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Two-year-old Paula Rieber likes singing, the color red and popcorn.

“It’s her favorite snack, popcorn and teddy grams," said Cynthia Rieber of Binghamton.

But things haven’t been easy. Paula has a condition called Tetralogy of the Fallot, a condition that affects four parts of her heart. When Paula was three-months-old, she had open heart surgery.

“Now she’s two and she’s a miracle," said Rieber, who hopes to get a bill passed in New York State that will make pulse oximetry screenings mandatory for newborns. "More and more children die each year from this than they do of all forms of childhood cancer combined and a lot of this could be prevented with a test.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 5,000 babies born in the U.S. each year have one of seven critical congenital heart defects. Pulse oximetry screenings can determine the amount of oxygen in a baby's blood and their pulse rate. Experts say low levels of oxygen in the blood can be one warning sign of a defect.

“One of the signs is that the baby will turn blue when it’s born," Charles Ho, a retired pediatric cardiologist. "We call it blue baby.”

And Rieber isn’t stopping at the state level. She’s going to Congress to speak on March first to raise awareness for CHD.

“I look back and think when she was first born and when we found out about her heart defect," said Rieber. "All the worries we had when we took her to get her open heart surgery, we didn’t know if we would be bringing her home or not. I look at her now and I just am amazed every single day.”

Rieber says the family celebrates Paula’s surgery date every year. They call it her heart-iversary.