The Good Stuff!

Now that you have a better understanding of how life was for me as a child let's get back to the good stuff!

I left off at the part of my giving birth to Ashley and as I told you by the time I found out I was pregnant, I was already 5 months along. What that meant was I wouldn't have much time to take it all in. I wouldn't have time to absorb the fact that not only was I going to be a Mother at the age of 16, but I was going to be a 16 year old Mom of a baby with a heart defect. That hit like a ton of bricks. I felt in ways I never thought I would. I just didn't understand why this was happening to me but I couldn't wallow in my emotions, my pregnancy had to go on. Nothing out of the ordinary would happen for the next several months. Telling friends and family along with baby showers and preparing as best as we could was how it would play out. I didn't gain much weight and most people didn't even know I was pregnant. I still went to school, I supported my dance team from the sidelines, and I lived life like I had been doing. And then Ash was born, and it changed everything. The dynamics of what life looked for me was no where near what I anticipated it to be.

Minneapolis Children's Hospital came to District One to pick up my beautiful baby. Children's Hospital was where Ash would spend the first three and a half months of her life. She was very blue when she was born and as I told you, her heart was four fifths the size of her chest. She would only be able to breathe on her own for the first 24 hours before having to be put on a ventilator. Her heart was huge, her lungs were small, and she needed all of the help she could get.

Ashley was born with a defect called Epstein's Anomaly.

It wasn't very common but Ashley had it.

She had tricuspid valve problems, atrial septal defects, and she needed a shunt put in to help guide blood through her heart to her lungs. They wanted Ash to gain a little more weight before she would have surgery, so they waited until she was 2.5 weeks old.

At 10 days old, I finally got to hold her.

It was super hard with all of the tubes and wires that were connected to her. I remember being scared to death I was going to hurt her. She was so fragile but she was my baby, and I couldn't wait to hold her. It was a long two weeks waiting for her surgery. I was so scared and had no clue what to expect.

My Mom, Dad, and I spent every moment at the hospital. I would often sleep in the parents overnight room, or I'd stay nearby at my aunt's house. I had so much love and support and could have never gotten through any of it without my parents. My Mom and Dad sacrificed a lot back then but they loved that baby more than life. Nothing was more important than seeing to it that Ash would get healthy and come home with us. It was a very difficult time during those first couple of weeks but what we wouldn't yet know is that on April 21,1990, things were about to get a hell of a lot harder.

That was surgery day.

The 1st surgery of many to come.

My best friend was there with me that day and as we waited for news from the OR, we decided to walk around. We needed to get our minds off of what we didn't know was happening so we walked. We didn't know the hospital well at that point and we accidentally made a wrong turn to the back entrance into the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit).

We walked in on something I have never to this day, gotten out of my mind.

I was stopped in my tracks as I watched the Anesthesiologist Dr. Miller, perform CPR on my baby girl.