So... Faith Christine was born February 11th 2010, in Fayetteville, NC. One day before her due date, weighing 6 lbs. 12 oz. Everything seemed to be going good, so about a half hour later Tommy walked her down to the nursery. About an hour later we had a visit from the pediatrician on call at the hospital that day come and give us some surprising and devastating news, that our daughter whom we thought was just as perfect as could be, had been diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot. A congenital heart defect. Basically meaning there was a hole in between the two chambers of her heart (VSD), the right ventricle is much larger/stiffer than the other, and her pulmonary valve is very narrow. All of this causes low oxygenation in her blood, causing her to turn blue because her oxyen levels are not so great. It is much more complicated than that but for now thats the best I can do. So to continue... We could not touch our newborn baby as she had to go to the NICU and was under an oxygen hood ( over her head) and had many, many monitors and wires and so forth hooked up to her, she was turning blue ( having tet spells as they call it) so we could not touch her, holding her was of course out of the question and talking too loudly around her was not good either because if she heard us or we touched her she would get upset and this would cause another spell, because when she cried she got worse. So she went on her first ever helicopter ride at around 8 pm that night to DUKE university hospital.

The life flight paramedics who came to get her were amazing, she was of course heavily sedated preparing for her trip so they let us talk to her and hold her hand before she left and as soon as Tommy put his finger in her palm she grabbed a hold of it and squuezed, even now it makes me cry to think about that, she's been a daddy's girl ever since! .We followed the next day as soon as I was discharged from the hospital. She was sent to the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at DUKE and when we came to see her the next day, she looked much much better even though our little girl was still very sick and still hooked up to many many things, we did get to hold her, her oxygen was of course being supported with a nasal canula. And she was beautiful! she already at only one day old had developed a personality and had an attitude at that! she did not like anyone but Tommy it seemed there for a few days she would cry at everyone! except him, he was the only one who could comfort her.

She continued to grow and get a little better, handling her feeds and things like that, she was even learning to eat from a bottle which is a huge step, and is going to be a hurdle we have to get over when this is all done. And then she had her surgery February 25th. Dr. James Jaggers of DUKE was able to do a full repair of her heart and she came through surgery beautifully. They say there will be another surgery necessary at some point in her life because the pulmonary valve which was widened, will begin to leak at some point because that was where he made his incision. But they hope it will be many years down the road. So she seemed to be doing well all that day and that night. The next day we got a terrifieng phone call that something was wrong and that we needed to come the hospital immediatly. Her heart stopped. It was so stressed after surgery it was trieng to pump so hard it just, gave up.By the Grace of God cause I always believe he has a plan and he knows what he is doing, the surgeon Dr. Lodge was standing right in front of her when this happened and the team was able to do compressions on her and she came back within seconds.

There was no neurological problems or any other issues because of this, she was ok and her heart was even working on its own again, however they needed to put her on a machine called ECMO a heart/lung machine like the one she was on during her surgery. Which basically is a machine that pumps the blood through your body for you, so that your heart can relax. So this was very scary of course and it was scary to see very large hoses hooked up to her heart, her chest being open from the surgery ( which was another miracle from God, because had her chest been closed after surgery she would not have made it the next day.) But we were thankful that they had a such a machine that could do that for her, not just looking at the bright side, but truly feeling that way. So they said she could not be on the ecmo any more than 10 days max because this would cause problems and be dangerous.

So you know of course my little stinker, came off of it on day 10 of course after several weens earlier. He took her to the OR because he thought she would have to endure another surgery which he didnt want to do because it might not be successful but there was little else to do. So she surprised him when she was able to come off of it and stay off. She surprised many people that day.