7 Things I have Learned Since Micah's Broken Heart

More CHD Awareness Week!!!

1) Life is more fragile than I ever imagined it could be.

2) Babies/Children are the strongest things in the universe. I could not imagine going through all that Micah has and yet, he wakes up EVERY morning with a smile on his face and he NEVER stops. He knows how great it is to be alive.

3) All about the heart...I really only got that the heart had four chambers before...now I could probably ace an exam on all the functions of the heart, the anatomy as well as all the different heart defects and medications that are used.

4) That there are such things as a compounding pharmacy! I had never known that there are special pharmacies out there to make medicines for kids who have to take grown up medications in smaller doses that the pharmaceutical companies do not make.

5) That congenital heart defects are America's #1 birth defect....and the #1 cause of birth-defect related deaths. I did not learn this until Micah's heart was broken...there was no need for me to know...however, I am making it my goal to let everyone know this...it is something that we should all know.

6) That no matter how much I want to, I cannot make Micah all better just by hugs and kisses. I HAD to rely on and trust strangers to keep him alive and that is by far one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. I do not trust easily, there are very, very few that I trust in my life, and then I found out about Micah's heart and all I could do was trust in others...there was no way that I was going to be able to fix him on my own. That is a horrible feeling to have, not being able to do the most basic, human thing that a mother is suppose to do...protect her child.

7) I have learned all about feeding issues. Not the normal kind of my kid won't eat vegetables...the kind where your child at one year of age is actually diagnosed with anorexia. The kind that you watch your child starving himself and there is not a single thing in the world that you can do to help him. The kind of feeding issues that kept me nursing him until he was 23 months old just so he got some kind of nutrition. It is heartbreaking to watch a child who was once eating so well, just turn it off overnight and then not turn back. I have learned all about feeding tubes/buttons, watched my baby go for another surgery to save his life again (though not in the same manner as his heart) and then finally start to thrive again.

Most of these things are not the happy things that we get to learn as parents, but they are things that I have learned since Micah's diagnosis came on March 30, 2006. I never imagined all that I could learn just from hearing that my baby was going to be born with a broken heart.