7 months

7 months ago arianna beth was born. we didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, and i had had an uneventful pregnancy. the morning after ari was born, we found out that she had a significant heart murmer and the drs. wanted to take some tests. they said it would probably be nothing and that she would grow out of it. they were wrong. they came back and said that she had such a severe heart defect that she needed open heart surgery within the week in order to save her life. if they didn't, her lungs would fill up with fluid and she would die. they were taking her to a hospital an hour and a half away and they were leaving within an hour. we were stunned. nothing could have prepared us for the hardest journey of our lives.

when arianna was 5 days old, she underwent major open heart surgery to repair her heart. she had hemitruncus. her right pulmonary artery was coming off of her aorta instead of her main pulmonary artery. it is such a rare defect that few surgeons ever get to operate on one in their lifetime. ari's surgeon had done one other surgery that was exactly the same thing. he knew precisely what to do and was very confident in the outcome. we sensed that God had led us to this particular surgeon. they would have to use some cadaver tissue to rebuild the artery walls. someone had to die for arianna.

the surgery lasted for hours. it was not as hard as we thought. we had counted 13 churches that we knew of that were praying for us. and we felt it. in our lowest moments, when we could not make it through another day, we felt our spirits lifted the next morning and knew we were being lifted up. this was how the body of Christ was supposed to work. when the surgeon came out and told us it went as well as he expected, we were relieved and thrilled. but ari still had to recover and start eating again. they hadn't fed her for a week. i had been pumping every three hours during that time. i feared that the stress would overtake my body and my milk would dry up. my friends prayed that i would be able to nurse ari. i kept pumping, and when ari was able to start eating from a bottle, i had stored enough for her. when she finally was able to come home, she started nursing. my milk did not dry up, even when the odds were stacked up against me. the Lord preserved my body.

ari left the hospital 3 weeks after she was admitted, on Good Friday. she was on several medicines that she had to take several times a day to keep her heart working the right way. we had restrictions on how we had to hold her and were told how to check her heartbeat with a stethoscope before we gave her the medicines. she was on a supplemental calcium because her calcium levels were too high. eventually they figured out it was from the blood transfusion that she had. they said we could rub vitamin e oil on her scar to minimize it as much as possible. it runs right down the center of her chest, and we wonder if she will be embarrassed about it as she grows up.

7 months later, we went to her cardiologist appointment. he did an echo-cardiogram and told us that her heart looked excellent. that it was better than expected and it was growing with her body. he told us that she doesn't need any medicines anymore and that we didn't need to come back for another 6 months. she has no restrictions because of her heart since it is fully healed. we also found out her calcium is back to normal and we don't need anymore medicine for that either. her scar has healed up better than we had hoped. she is still nursing and is growing exactly the way she should be.

our little baby girl is a miracle. and we are SO thankful to the body of Christ for prayer and love. it is hard to believe that such a rare problem could be fixed so easily and now, only 7 months later, she is as good as new. i wanted to share this with you because it has been so evident to us that God has chosen to afflict and heal. and because of that we can rejoice and be a testimony of God's deliverence.