23 months old!

This little miracle turned 23 months old today! This picture was taken a few days ago when we were shopping for plants. Emma started saying "down! down!" so we let her down and she was so excited to WALK around and explore! It's so amazing that Emma is alive, that she's walking, and that she's so full of joy and life!

Most people who look at her have no idea that she's been through so much. Just looking at her, you can't tell that she was born missing half of her heart, or that her heart, lungs, and kidneys were so sick when she was born that she almost didn't survive her first day of life let alone many days that followed, or that she has coded and been life flighted multiple times, or that she's had three open heart surgeries including a heart transplant, or that she spent most of her first 7 months of life in the ICU on life support, or that she's had major oral aversions and feeding challenges and was unable to eat or drink by mouth until she was 8 months old...

Instead, she just looks like a happy little toddler who is thriving! And for that we are incredibly grateful. We look at her and see happy toddler too, but we lived through the backstory, so we are reminded of it all the time. We see that she's fought so hard her whole life and never stopped fighting. She worked SO hard to learn how to crawl and learn how to walk. It's been her biggest challenge this past year. But she is SO proud of herself for learning how to walk, and so are we. These days that we are living are the days we dreamed of while we were sitting by her hospital bed, crying and praying for her life. It's hard to believe that she'll be turning two soon! We are thankful for many answered prayers, the amazing medical teams, our wonderful support system, and the donor family who we may never know. Mostly we are just so thankful for these past 23 months with our amazing, sweet baby girl!

Results from Emma's cath

Sorry for not updating sooner after Emma's cath...She ended up having a really rough week afterwards. She came down with a GI bug and then she got a sinus infection and an infection on her gums. She is on antibiotics now and thankfully starting to do much better!

But here's the update on how her cath went:

Being at the hospital was really hard on Emma emotionally. Anytime anyone opened a door or came near her she would melt down and start crying and screaming. She was so scared. It was really hard for us as parents to watch. Emma is getting to the age where she's remembering things more and because of that she's terrified of the hospital and anyone in scrubs or with gloves on...and she's fighting them more than she used to.  

But despite having a rough time emotionally, we are really thankful to report that her cath went really well! She has several occluded vessels, but they were able to gain access fairly quickly this time. Overall the results of the cath looked very similar to last time, which is good because it means there has not been additional narrowing or pulmonary hypertension. Her pressures all looked good. She still had some narrowing of her LPA, but not enough to merit any ballooning or stenting at this time! So they will continue monitoring the narrowing and turbulence in the pulmonary vessels and will try to get additional imaging at her next cath. If everything continues to go well, Emma won't need another cath for a year!!

Emma's echo, ekg, and labs all looked good too! We found out the results of the heart biopsy just a few days ago, and she has NO rejection!!! Praise the Lord!!!
Recovery went a lot smoother than expected. Emma slept for a good bit of recovery and was fine as long as mommy was holding her and no medical staff was in the room. She clearly hadn't forgotten how traumatized she was that morning - because anytime anyone touched her, she melted down. It was sad, but everyone was really sweet to her and tried to do as little as possible.

We are so thankful for such good results, a smooth cath, and smooth time in recovery!
Thank you all for your prayers and encouraging words! ❤️

Cath Day

Well I can't sleep due to nerves (I should be a pro at sending my baby into a cath or surgery by now - but it never seems to get easier), so I wanted to give a more complete update on what's happening today.

Emma will be undergoing a heart catheterization and biopsy this morning. What that means is a catheter will be inserted into two main vessels (usually one in her groin and one in her neck) and threaded through those blood vessels to her heart. She will be intubated and put under anesthesia for this procedure. They will be looking at heart function and pressures. She's had some high blood pressure lately, but they are hoping to get some really good readings since she'll be asleep (it's really hard to get a good blood pressure on a squirmy toddler!) They will also be taking a tiny piece of her heart to do a biopsy which will check for rejection.

They will also be reevaluating the narrowing of her pulmonary veins and arteries which continues to show up on echoes as a potential concern.

They will also be looking to see if she has any reoccurring issues with pulmonary hypertension now that they've taken her off the medication that helped with that.

We would appreciate prayers for NO rejection and good results all around!

Emma won't be allowed to eat or nurse this morning which will likely make her very fussy...especially since she has to get a blood draw done before we even check in to the surgery center. Blood draws are always so hard for her anyways, since she has such tiny veins because of previously having HLHS. We are hoping they will be able to get the drug levels with a heel poke and then the rest can be done during the cath. Emma is scheduled for second case, so the cath should start about 10:15am.

After the procedure is over Emma has to lie still in recovery for at least four hours. We are bringing Mickey Mouse clubhouse and Frozen to keep her entertained, but would appreciate prayers for her peace and comfort also! Thank you for praying!!

"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:26

An update on life - Emma is 20 months!

Emma is 20 months old today! Ever since we brought her home from the hospital, time is passing way too quickly! Life has been crazy busy. I started my tax season job again, so now Mickey and I are both working and I also started business as a Norwex consultant at the end of 2016. We are working hard to try to pay off bills, student loan debt (it's crazy to believe we've only been college grads for 2.5 years), and get ourselves into a better place financially, especially because of all the unknowns with Emma's health. We are also busy keeping up with Emma and all of her medical needs, as well as just regular toddler stuff! So life is a little crazy, but we manage. We end up playing tag team a lot with Emma, passing her off in between jobs. But at the end of the day, we always make a point of spending some family time together. Because we are in a busy season, we don't have as much time to post updates, but we will do so when we can. :)

Emma continues to catch up to her milestones and we have been so impressed with her progress!
She loves to paint and color, play with her Little People, put puzzles together, tell us all of the farm animal names/sounds, play with her little kitchen, read books, hug and feed her babies, and play with her kitty and her grandparents doggies! She can stand on her own for a few seconds without holding onto anything, she can walk with help as she says "step step step!", she also likes to push her walker or car around, and she starting to climb!

We've been struggling with nutrition some lately, but we can almost always find something that she will eat, and she's still nursing. This week marks one year of nursing, which is a huge accomplishment! We are working more and more on teaching her to drink from a cup, and we haven't gotten very far yet. But we discovered that she does prefer a glass drinking cup - especially if it's the one we are drinking from! ;)

All in all, Emma has been doing really well, and we are so thankful that she is alive and thriving! A year ago we were getting ready to move home from the Ronald McDonald house in Seattle. Even though 2016 was pretty crazy and involved several more moves, we never ended up back in the hospital for an inpatient stay, which is truly amazing for the first year post transplant!

We are so grateful for our amazing family, friends, and facebook family who continue to show us so much love and support and most importantly pray for us and the health of our sweet girl!

10 days until Emma's heart cath

Next week we will be spending several days in Seattle, because our precious girl has her annual heart cath and biopsy. The transplant team will be checking for rejection, as well as looking at narrowing of vessels and evaluating heart function. Anxiety is definitely setting in for us. No matter how risky the procedure, it's hard to hand your child over to doctors to be put under anesthesia and be worked on. Emma doesn't usually handle the recovery very well, so we are hoping and praying that all goes well this time. It will also be hard awaiting the rejection biopsy results, but she hasn't had any signs of rejection, so we are thankful for that. As we get closer to cath day, please keep Emma in your prayers that she will stay healthy. So many people around us are getting sick, and we really need her to stay healthy for her procedure. Thank you all for your continued prayers. As stressful as this can be, we continue to lean on the Lord for strength.

The end of 2016!

2016 was so much better than 2015 for us! It was still full of challenges, but it was also an incredibly blessed year for our family because Emma is alive and thriving with her new heart! She spent the entire year living life outside of the hospital!!! We are rejoicing and praising God for that!!

Not once did Emma have to go to sleep at night in a hospital bed like she had done so many times the year before. This year alone she had hundreds of appointments and blood draws, took thousands of doses of life saving medication and had a heart catheterization. But it was all outpatient. At the end of the day, we always got to take our baby to our hotel or home. No surgical floor, no ICU, no sleeping on hospital couches, no open heart surgeries, no blood transfusions, no extra oxygen...just a whole lot of living. 

It was only a little over a year ago that it looked like Emma would never leave the hospital. It was unlikely that she would even live long enough to experience her first Christmas. We were running out of options. We stood at her bedside heartbroken as we were staring death in the face. 

But then we were given word of a most incredible gift. Another family who was in the midst of tragedy had made a decision to donate their child's organs, which ultimately saved the life of Emma and likely other children around the country. Emma made it through that high risk surgery better than any of the doctors expected, which was an answer to thousands of prayers. She beat all of the odds, and continues to amaze us every day.

Yesterday marked 3 years since Mickey proposed to me, which reminded us that we've only been married 2.5 years and have a 19 month old who has had three open heart surgeries including a heart transplant, we've lived in 7 different places, and we bought our first house! 

We are so thankful for a full year together outside of the hospital, and are looking forward to many more! But we are also hoping this coming year is a little less eventful! 

Christmas 2016

This was Emma's second Christmas, but it was her first Christmas at home, and her first Christmas old enough and healthy enough to enjoy opening presents! We had a magical day celebrating the birth of our Savior, but also being filled with so much gratitude and joy for Emma's life as we watched her unwrap her gifts and enjoy the day! She almost didn't make it this far. We were so close to losing her, and yet God had a different plan. Her special heart came just in time, and she made it through an incredibly risky surgery and difficult recovery. We are just so thankful to be celebrating another holiday with our little miracle!

Feeding her baby!

When Emma finally woke up around 10am, she was SO excited to see her "new to us" play kitchen!! We were so excited to get it for her when we found it this summer, and it's been hard to keep it a surprise all this time! But it was definitely worth it. She's been busy playing with it every chance she gets! She also got so many other sweet gifts from family and friends! It's been a difficult year especially financially, but we have been so blessed and are so thankful for all those who have loved on our baby girl!

We even got to spend part of Christmas with Emma's little cousin and other relatives!

And after all of the excitement Emma fell right to sleep for a Christmas afternoon nap!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!