Aria's First Birthday

Baby Aria has had an amazing journey in life within her first year.  I was not faithful in blogging during her birth so I will try to shorten the story.  Her mom was a week past her due date when the doctor decided to go ahead and induce.  I was able to go the hospital with my mom and sit with my cousin and the rest of my family while we  anxiously awaited Aria's arrival.  My mom, step dad, sister and her two girls, and me and Maddy all went to O'Charley's to grab a bite to eat.  Right as we were getting to ready to pay and leave my mom received a phone call from my grandmother who was in tears telling my mom to please pray for Aria something was terribly wrong. All we knew was that Aria was having trouble breathing.  In my mind it was no big deal...my grandmother exaggerates as it is...and the nurses had a real hard time getting Maddy to breathe as well.  I shrugged it off and was like yeah, whatever...baby is fine.  My grandmother calls again to say it is bad and we need to pray.  Well, by this time I am shocked and had a bad feeling this baby would not make it.  We all go to the hospital and hear the news that Aria might not make it.  We had no idea what was wrong other than they could not get her stabilized and she was having problems breathing.  My aunt was just boohooing and told us the experience she just went through and that after they took Aria to the NICU, the nurse came back to the room and told my cousin that she needed to pray for this baby.  For a nurse to say that tells you something is really wrong.  They told my cousin that they weren't sure if they could keep Aria alive long enough to make it to another local hospital (T.C. Thompson).  Because they could not get her stabilized they called for the staff of T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital to come to the hospital Aria was born in.  By this point we are all just so overwhelmed with sadness and shock and I felt so guilty having Maddy there because I really felt Aria was not going to make it and my cousin would go home babyless and here I have my perfectly healthy baby. They allowed my cousin to go back and see Aria, which was another sign that they thought she would not make it as well.  The other hospital staff arrived to work on Aria and were successful in getting her stabilized.  They hooked her up to an isolette that was on a stretcher and wheeled her off into the ambulance.  Seeing her wheeled off like that is just something I will never forget. Babies are so innocent and helpless as it is and seeing her lifeless body on that stretcher was just too much.

Once transported to the other hospital it was determined she had a diaphragmatic(sp?) hernia and something else...i already forgot what it was. They said diaphragmatic babies usually do not make it so once again odds against Aria were not good at all. After an hour or so at the local hospital, it was determined she would be transported to Egleston's Children Hospital in Atlanta, GA and placed on an ECMO machine.

Here she is in ATL hooked up. The amount of machinery that was attached to her was unreal. I will post a pic of that as well.

All those monitors were for this one baby...Aria. Her hernia was causing her heart to be on the wrong side...they were not sure she even had both of her lungs and her intestines were pushed up into her chest. They found she did in fact have both lungs, but underwent surgeries to correct the hernia. She spent like 50 something days in the NICU I believe it was and she was able to go home sometime in July i think. Aria has defied many odds and has been a proven miracle. On May 23 we celebrated her first birthday at Harrison Bay State Park. I will post the pics now.