Haylee

Haylee was born on 11/5/2009 and seemed to be healthy. The hospital was concerned since she was having trouble staying warm and her hands and feet were blue. They did a CBC and that was normal. We took her home and at 72 hours old she was going into shock. We rushed her back to the ER not knowing what was going wrong. As soon as we got there, they asked us to wait in the family room while they performed life saving techniques. They intubated her, gave her dopamine and epinephrine, and an intraosseous IV. Within an hour or so, we found out Haylee had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). We were told we would have to be transferred to Christ Hospital where Dr. Ilbawi would need to perform a series of three surgeries to save her.

We were transferred to Christ the next day after watching the nurses work non-stop to keep Haylee alive and try to stabilize her. We stayed in the NICU for almost a month waiting for her kidneys to recover enough for her to have surgery. The doctors said that they felt the hybrid procedure would be best to do until she was strong enough for the Norwood surgery. That went well, but the surgery wasn't working the way they had hoped. Three weeks later, she had the Norwood procedure done. Besides bleeding issues in the OR, she had no problems after surgery. She was extubated and was recovering quickly. Two weeks later, we came home. We spent almost 3 months in the hospital and we were fortunate enough to stay at the Ronald McDonald House near Hope Children's Hospital. Thank God for the best nurses and doctors around that helped us and Haylee get through everything with minimal complications.

We will be back in March for the Glenn surgery, and I know Haylee will be in the best hands.