oh kaia belle

Hello everyone. As most of you know, our baby girl Kaia Belle (Kay-ah) was born with a heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. I can't go into details right now as to what that is, but there is info on the web if you are interested. We are very lucky that a night shift pediatrician at St John's Westshore heard a "heart murmor" and sent Kaia to Rainbow to have it looked at. Had we gone home with her with this condition would have been fatal. We truly believe that God has watched out for her from the time and way she had to be born to the time and way they found out about the defect and will continue to watch over her her entire life.

Eric and I are extremely touched and overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, emotion, help, prayers, love of family, friends and complete strangers. Because of all of you, we are holding strong. I never could have imagined the numbers of people we have praying for us right now. It has to be in the thousands. It's incredible to know that people who don't even know her love her so much. We know that Kaia will make it. The doctors called her the "poster child for hypoplast kids" because she is staying so stable and gaining strength to make it through surgery. Her surgery is tuesday. After the initial surgery, she will have two others. One will be at 5 months or so and one at 3-4 years old. With the final surgery, her heart should work at 95% of a normal/healthy human heart. So, that is hopeful! She will be under cardiac care her entire life, as she will have two chambers doing the work of four.

This certainly was a shock to Eric and I. I think we didn't breathe for days after we got the news. Any parent knows how scary and heartbreaking it would be to see your newborn baby go through something so traumatic. All we want is to hold her when she cries, and the most we really can do is cup her head and hold her little fingers. We love her so so much....more than we could have ever anticipated, and we really want to thank everyone for their loving support. Please keep in mind that the most critical days will be the first week AFTER her surgery, when her body is weaning off the life support machines and learning how to work on its own. So, please keep the prayers coming, even after tuesday! And, if you can find the time, please read the email below about the Kandles for Kaia campaign my cousin Karen started. (thanks Karen!). We love this idea and will visualize all of the candles lit for her on tuesday as she's being operated on.

Just wanted to update everyone. We love you. We will share pictures when we have time to download them. ;)
Keep the positive vibes flowing!