Stopping to smell the roses!

Our daughter, Lucy Kate, was diagnosed with Tricuspid Atresia with a VSD and an ASD at 24 weeks gestation. Both her father and I have never spent a day in the hospital, hardly ever even get the flu?yet now we were faced with the fact that we could very well end up with a child who required much more from the medical field than we ever imagined. Lucy's brother, Ethan, is 3 years old and completely healthy. The only thing we could remotely attribute her condition to was an uncle of my husband?s who died of Tetralogy of Fallot at 10 years of age. (Of course, as her mother, always in the back of my mind lies a pang of guilt about what I did wrong at the time her little heart was forming in the womb...)

We feel blessed to have been given the extra time before her birth to research and pray about her condition. On August 27th of 2003 Lucy was born via c-section weighing in at a healthy 6 lbs 2 oz. She was bigger than every other baby in her NICU and was released to come home with me at 3 days old.

Lucy did very well after birth and we even got away without having to do the B-T shunt procedure. Her first corrective surgery (bi-directional Glenn) occurred last February when she was 5 months old and she did remarkably well. Lucy continues to grow and amaze us every day. We expect she will have her Fontan next summer sometime.

Both my husband and I look forward to hearing from other parents with children with CHDs as well as adults with CHDs...it's a world we never thought we'd be a part of, but feel blessed to have such a wonderful little girl leading the way!