Ready

Evin's surgery is less than 48 hours away.  Mitch and I have been trying to mentally and emotionally prepare ourselves, if that is even possible.  How to you prepare yourself for your baby to have open heart surgery?  I have moments where I am terrified, anxious, stressed and completely sick over it all, but I also have moments when I find comfort in knowing that I have a strong baby girl who is tough and resilient.  Regardless of how I am feeling emotionally, I am trusting in God and gratefully admire the work He has done so far through our precious girl.

Mitch and I have talked several times lately about how ready we are for Evin to have her surgery.  Even though we feel overwhelmed by it, we are ready for so many reasons.

We are ready for Evin to have a heart that functions as it should.  Her heart is working so much harder than a healthy heart has to.

We can’t wait for her to know what it is like to take a bottle without getting worn out.  Poor girl has no idea that eating should be much easier than it has been for the last 5 months.  Hopefully she won’t have to work for a whole hour to take a bottle.

We are ready for her to be able to go longer than 12 hours without having to take medication.  She doesn’t like taking it and who wants to have to give their baby medicine all the time?

We are ready to have time with her when we aren’t constantly checking to make sure her feet aren’t turning purple or that she isn’t having labored breathing or acting lethargic.  Thankfully, this hasn’t happened so far (except for a couple of time she had a purple foot or arm from poor circulation), but we were warned that we should watch for these things.  Of course, we know that we will still worry, but we hope to not have so much of a reason to worry.

We are ready to not have to be concerned quite so much about her weight.  Obviously we are always going to make sure she is gaining, but there won’t be nearly as much pressure for her to bulk up as there has been before this surgery.

It will be nice to {hopefully} not have quite as many feelings of stress, but most of all I can’t wait for Evin to feel what it is like to have a “normal” heart.  While her heart won’t be considered completely normal because it will have been augmented, it will be so much more normal than her heart is now.

We can’t wait for our babe’s tiny broken heart to be fixed.