Our little miracle

In the first 2 weeks of her life, our little Charley has endured 2 heart caths, 2 open heart surgerys and endless poking and proding. Not the "typical" start to life for a newborn, but then again, she is anything but typical! She has been showing us day in and day out just how brave and strong she is. Charley truely is our little miracle.

I've found myself thinking a lot about miracles lately, and how my perception of them has changed over the past few weeks. I spent months and months praying for a miracle for our little girl--praying that we would go in for one of her fetal echos and they would tell us that everything was better and that her heart had "fixed" itself. I wanted that so badly for her, and my heart would break a little bit each time we found out that things hadn't changed. I wanted a BIG miracle so badly.

The arrival of our little Charley has opened my eyes to a whole new world of miracles. She came into this world pink and screaming, not at all blue like Matt and I had prepared ourselves for. She held her own in the week before her first surgery, showing us what a fighter she was going to be. After making it through an 8 hour open heart surgery with 6 hours of bypass, she didn't need help from medication to support her heart rate. Dr. Hammel, her surgeon, made a comment that she just kind of "walked through it." Our most recent miracles? Charley had her 2nd surgery on Thursday morning (only lasted a few hours this time, much to our relief!) and has been improving by leaps and bounds. When we left here on Thursday night, she was still quite sedated from all of her anesthesia. By Friday morning, there she was, totally wide-eyed and off of her sedation and IV narcotic. She was so alert that only one day after surgery they were able to remove her breathing tube and her catheter, stop her only heart medication, cut way back on her diuretic, increase her feeds, and stop her supplemental oxygen. Sure, these things may seem small in comparison to that HUGE miracle I was originally praying for, but that doesn't make them any less significant.

Small miracles happen around us each and every day. I think that too often we fixate so much on the big picture that the small details can pass by totally unappreciated. In her short 2 weeks, Charley has already taught Matt and I to slow things down and soak in life's little miracles. I can't wait to see what she teaches us tomorrow....