Not always easy!

Mike and I are proud parents to a sweet, outgoing, hilarious, loving, smart, perfect almost 15 month old toddler. We are always proud parents to a little boy with a life-threatening heart condition. Thankfully, most days it's super easy to forget that second sentence. Unfortunately, it's never, ever, ever going away. Sigh.

My amazing little sister Jenna gave Blaise one of the greatest gifts of all-time at his birthday. She went through and had every single blog post and photo printed and bound into a book that she gave us at his first birthday. I was crying before I could even get it unwrapped. It's on our coffee table, and every once and a while I'll grab it and read back through where we've been and what Blaise went through.  

Tonight was one of those nights. Yesterday "super crazy anal mom" went into high speed when Blaise randomly stopped walking and refused to do it most of the morning/early afternoon. Freaking out, I had Blaise packed, strapped in his car seat and was backing down the driveway to Children's because I was so afraid something was wrong with him. Thankfully, a second opinion stop at Grandpa and Grandma Hartwell's and he was off walking again. The thoughts that can run through your head in a second when you have a chronically ill child like Blaise are something else!

So quickly Mike and I have forgotten the stress of how sick Blaise really was during those first few months at home. Daily weights, measuring and recording every milliliter of milk he drank, nightly oxygen stat checks, multiple life/death heart medications and the ever dreaded blood thinner shots. Ironically, I wish we would have videotaped ourselves giving one of these shots. It makes me tear up now even, thinking about the stress we dealt with every time we did it. I think there was a constant lump in our throats for the first five months. Oh, the stress of feeding him. I will NEVER forget, the all-night tears and fears with Mike and both sets of parents as we tried every trick, bribe and method we could come up with to get our precious baby to just drink an ounce. We are so thankful to have families that have been rocks by our sides.

I absolutely cannot imagine going through the fears we've been through with Blaise again. I pray every morning and every night for God to make Blaise's heart survive a lifetime. I pray for zero complications or new developments or changes with his heart. I fear with all of my being having to hand him over for his next open heart surgery. How we will ever get through that is beyond me. Ironic, I just typed that last sentence but if you were to tell me three years ago I would have a child with HRHS, I would have typed the same sentence- how  would I ever get through it is beyond me- and yet- we have. We will. We do. All praises to our God!