Its never been easy for us to get pregnant. We had a miscarriage, that was pretty traumatic, when we first were married (God has a plan, and there's a reason that sweet baby didn't come at that time). Then it took us 7 months (once we started trying again) to get pregnant with our oldest (A) and 9 months to get pregnant with our lil miss (R). We were so ecstatic when we found out we were pregnant with our lil miss. She was literally an answer to our prayers. Then 9 months later this sweet lil miss was placed in our arms. She came when she wanted to and no force on earth has been able to push her to do anything on this blessed Earth before she's been ready for it since. But something seemed off...her head was a bit blue when she was first born and we asked about it, the nurse passed it off as "bruising." We really didn't think much on it, too excited for our lil girl being here with us.
When she was supposed to eat next I had to wake her, not uncommon, but she was blue from head to toe and would only eat about 5 mins. I started to get nervous, my wonderful sister came to visit with A and the hubbster, no one said anything. So I thought we were good. That was until the nurse came in to check on her and couldn't get her to pink up either. This sweet nurse very kindly took R with her to the nursery and within a few short minutes I quickly realized something wasn't right. I walk into the nursery to them pumping air into my daughter's lungs. How could this be? She's breathing just fine. No one ever said there were any complications when we went in for our ultrasounds.
The nurses explain to me that my daughter's O2 levels were very low and they needed to keep them up. They ran an Echo and found that she had Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA). For those who don't know TGA is where the 2 main arteries in your heart are switched around and all your oxygenated blood is being pushed back to your lungs instead of out to your body. WOW! How could this happen? She was perfectly fine 7 hours ago, or at least that's what we were being told. They quickly rush her to Children's Mercy Hospital.
Within the first 3 days she has several apneic episodes, and has to have a "balloon surgery." Where they run a catheter up her artery into her heart and insert a balloon into her heart where they can open the passage to allow the heart mix her blood correctly. After this surgery we're told to "wait and see" for the next 5 days. Until we finally get our chance to have the surgery. Our lil 9 day old daughter needed to go into open heart surgery. We couldn't go with her. We couldn't comfort her. All we could do was sit in the waiting room and wait for the nurse to come in and tell us what was going on every hour. 8 hours later, we find out that she made it through the surgery but when they took her off the machine running her heart for the surgery there was some damage to her lungs and her right lung collapsed completely. They were able get her back on the machine but had to leave her chest open and her on the machine because there was now blood in her lungs. The doctor came back and closed her chest the next day, a few days later she was taken off of the machine, within 2 weeks we were home, finally.
We decided to do this big event by ourselves. This was the greatest choice for our family. No one really lived close enough to drop everything and come and help, besides everyone else in our family would make things more stressful than what was necessary. So we were blessed to find a friend to come take me to the hospital that they had taken R to and God also blessed me and my hubby with the opportunity to lean on each other and grow closer to each other in ways that no one will ever understand. We prayed together, read our scriptures together, and took turns spending time with A and R. We even found a way to celebrate A's birthday while we were at the hospital. He was so grateful for just the cake and ice cream, what a sweet lil spirit he is for us.
We learned what God meant when He told us to "leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife." (Abraham 5:18) What a wonderful experience/trial God gave us. Not only do we get to grow and learn with this sweet lil miss of ours, whose not always sweet but very fun, but we were able to realize the true meaning of a family. Our family grew much more than by just adding another member. We were able to learn how to love and serve each other more fully and how to grow closer to each other in a way that only this trial could give us. I truly feel that we became an actual family and couple that day, instead of acting with our own purposes in mind we were more attentive and considerate of each other and more grateful for the life we have and the craziness it brings us.
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