Great Night

6.38am

We had a really good day yesterday with Abi and in the evening, she had fun with her bath and did not fight sleep too much. Then she woke up only 3 times so far !!!! WOW! She woke up after 3 hours to eat and fell back asleep immediately. Then she woke up again after 2.5 hours and again after 3.5 hours. It's 6.46am right now and she's sound asleep !!!! It's been a while since she slept past 6am.

Isn't this a great beginning of the new wonderful year? ;-)

Art

1st Day of New Year!

7:50pm

What a beautiful first day of the year! 

Abi woke up 3 times at night to eat and then at 5 in the morning because of her congestion she's slowly overcoming. 

The New Year's Eve passed by pretty quickly, accompanied by Skype video conference with our parents in Poland (I was able to see fireworks from my parents' balcony) and our brother and sister who stayed with us and shared a glass of champagne at pretended midnight after Abi went to sleep (around 8 pm). 

We obviously didn't last till 12am. We greeted a New Year after 1am when feeding Abi.

Thank you for visiting Abi's blog, your interest, prayers and support. We deeply appreciate that!
I have already started updating this blog with links to other "heart" babies' (with their parent's permission) that were touched with the Congenital Heart Defects. I hope this blog will become a valuable source of information to all interested in the topic and mainly to the parents who may have just found out about their baby's defect(s) and are searching the internet for some answers. 
  

Happy New Year!

J.

More Hearts and New Year...

9:30pm

I know, this blog is about Abi and it will always belong to her, but I also keep thinking about other parents who may have just found out about their baby's heart, like we did almost a year ago. I asked other moms I know, to share their stories with me. I soon should be able to include more information about other Congenital Heart Defects (CHD) to share with you. The power of a spoken and written word is limitless, not mentioning unbeatable Google!! I once "googled" a double switch surgery and found my own research on the FIRST page. This really encourages me to continue to expand this blog and enrich it with more and more useful information.

I would like to use this opportunity and wish Everyone a very Happy New Year. May this coming 2010 shower you with unexpected and joyful blessings and surprises. My hopes and wishes for you and myself are to say in exactly 365 days from now "this couldn't have been a better year!". May every New Year be better than the last one...

Now, we could use a picture of Abi to conclude this post....
Abi literally fell asleep while eating lunch in a sitting position. How about that? I know some wish they could do that (especially at work, eh?)...

Good night...

J.

2009 leaves the scars...

8:30pm
It was such a treat to be able to spend this special Christmas time with the closest family. We would still love to have our parents and siblings with us, but having Abi at home to celebrate the holidays was like a dream come true.


We continue to stop and look at Abi in amazement. Wow, I can't believe she's here with us, already, after the surgery. It will probably take a few more of those moments before we get used to this fact. The only thing that I don't want to do, is to forget about what happened, how God showed His peace, healing power and confirmation of His love to us. I want Abi's story to touch and encourage more people as she continues to grow. The surgery was just the beginning...


The last couple of days of 2009 we are practically brushing up on the daily and night routines, keeping a close eye on Abi's breathing and eating patterns, behavior and the healing scar... 
I pealed off the last 2 bandages on her 8 cm (3.14 in) incision!!
The scar looks great! Almost as pale as her skin. 
I am truly impressed with the look. Just take a look:

This scar...is why she's here and destined to live a very long life...
This scar...is her testimony of God's new Heart for her...  
This scar...tells a story of one brave and strong little girl.. 
If she was able to go through this in a blink of an eye, there is nothing she would not be capable of doing! 

No matter how big and how visible the scar will be when Abi grows up, I hope she will feel proud of it! I will make sure she feels confident about it and will want to wear whatever she likes. 

There were so many times I would think how unfair God was to allow her heart to be so complicated, imperfect and abnormal like that.. I could not in the whole world understand WHY!!!?? He would want such a thing to happen to a baby! 
This year has been filled with a mixture of so many emotions and feelings like joy when we first found out about Abi through fear, disappointment, anger, unforgiveness, helplessness, frustration, envy, sadness to peace, hope and blessed at the end... 


2009 is definitely classified as the most challenging, emotionally draining, exhausting yet educational year of my life. 
It seems like Abi is not the only one with the scar on her heart. We all have one in ours as we went through the healing process with Abi.


J.

Living in peace

10.50am

We got emails from some of you asking what’s going on with the lack of posts since last Thursday. Oh boy, I can’t believe it’s been so long since we posted here. We apologize all of you who check the blog daily or almost daily (and we know there are hundreds of visits a day for what we are very thankful!).

The wonderful Christmas time has just been crazy for us. Crazy in a very positive way. We had visitors almost every day – wonderful! We love you all and we love to have you over!!!! When only we could (definition of ‘when only we could’ is when Abi was taking a nap) we tried to catch up on sleeping as well.

Seems like it is not for us to sleep at night ;-) Two nights ago Asia and I talked about it and tried to come up with possible reasons why Abi was up exactly every 2 hours. It is funny because once we heard her ‘call’ us I told Asia what time it was without even looking at the clock and I was right to the minute. Incredible!!! So we talked about it and we came up with the following list: 1) it’s habitual. No reason for it and not really hungry [but still eating]. 2) Growth spurt (with the amounts she’s eating overnight she must be catching up on the past 5 months growth spurts as well). 3) She’s just messing with us and doesn’t want us to get any sleep.

Other than that she’s still doing wonderful. So far she has not developed any of the possible complications, and even though theoretically she can still develop them we pray she won’t and we know our God is crazy about her and if He has a fridge in heaven her picture is on it, so we have peace about her future. Yes, we live in peace every day. It’s incredible because it is not easy and when we look at things from our, human perspective, it’s very easy to be bumped and depressed, but He’s been good to us for so many years and even now is pouring His peace and love upon us daily! That’s really cool! I’m telling you all who haven’t tasted it yet! Just try!

I’m back to work today, but Asia is staying home for the next couple days/weeks which is great! It is so good to have them both around!

Have a wonderful day!

Art

First Christmas Eve

It was a great day today. Our first Christmas Eve filled with talks about last year when we were talking about today wondering who that would be sitting with us at this table. A little boy or a little girl. What would she look like? What whould she be like? How was it going to be etc. It was a year ago but seems like it was just yesterday. Then we had no idea this Christmas would be so special and blessed.

Art

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It's Wigilia Today

In Poland our families have started celebrating Christmas Eve, called Wigilia. This post is dedicated to them and our friends from Poland! :)


This is how we celebrated Christmas in 2007 with our families...(the last time we actually spent Christmas together..)

Dzien Dobry wszystkim w Polsce!!
Z okazji nadchodzacych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia, skladamy Wam Kochani, wszystkiego najlepszego, duzo zdrowia, pokoju oraz samych powodow do usmiechu.



And to all - Merry Christmas!!

Art, Asia and Abi..


P.S. Abi is 5 months today!!