A Day to Remember...

A year ago today (Aug 13, 2011) we were finally able to bring Stella home from her second open heart surgery. After two months of living at Phoenix Children's Hospital and the Ronald McDonald House we came home to sleep in our own beds (Stella in her pack & play in our room). 

We spent countless hours on the 5th floor in the CVICU at PCH in room 5108 and many days it felt like we would never make it back to our house. We had a <fairly> easy experience with her first surgery, everything was the best case scenario and we were only in the hospital for 2 weeks. We were given a 98% success rate going into her first surgery...for her 2nd surgery we only had a 1% success rate. There were many times when we didn't think that bringing Stella back home would even be an option but a year ago today we had the miracle of coming home as a family.  

It wasn't an easy homecoming, but it was definitely a joyous one! We didn't arrive home with just a baby; we also had a feeding pump (running 20 hours a day), a pulse oximeter, oxygen, and an extensive medication list that required us to deliver meds to Stella every 2 hours.

 We knew that we had a long road ahead of us but every moment was a blessing...we were losing sleep because we had to deliver medication, stop an alarming pulse ox, or add food to a pump, not because we had lost our baby girl. A year really does make a BIG DIFFERENCE. None of the doctors or surgeons that discharged us from PCH expected Stella to be where she is at today. She has continued to be a strong fighter and has overcome so many odds with a smile on her face.

Stella's Aunt Lesley made these heart shirts for all of the cousins to wear while Stella was in the hospital. Stella finally fits in her heart shirt and it is one of my favorite shirts for her to wear...in July 2011 as we took a picture of Stella in her hospital bed with the shirt covering her open chest post-surgery, I could not even imagine the happy pictures we would have the chance of capturing in July and August 2012 as Stella wears her heart shirt proudly.

Aug 13 will always be a day to remember...a glorious day where Stella proved the doctors wrong and showed the world God's grace by coming home with her mom and day instead of going home to God.