Our beautiful daughter Jessica was born in September 2011 with a severe heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This was diagnosed at her 20 week scan and we were initially told that she was unlikely to be suitable for surgery. However, a pioneering in-utero operation at 28 weeks to enlarge a hole in her atrial septum was carried out and she was able to make it to term and get through her first open-heart surgery at just eight hours old. Jessica underwent five more surgeries during her life. Her final surgery - the Fontan procedure - took place in December 2017. She initially made a good recovery but sadly passed away suddenly on 14th April 2018 at the age of 6. This is the story of a little girl whose half a heart overflowed with love. She was, and will forever be, our little miracle and brought joy to all who knew her.

Sunday 23 September 2012

Development and hospital dates


Jessica has now started to bum-shuffle backwards and is getting quite good at making her way across the floor when she wants to now (and we are starting to discover quite how un-babyproof our living room still is!) She is also now able to pull herself upwards into a sitting position from lying down. She now weighs in at 7645g (16lb 13oz) and is starting to get in to the 6-9 month clothes.


Once again it has been a sociable couple of weeks in the life of Jessica – we have been to visit our friends Emma & James; Jessica met our friends Vicky and Sean and their family for the first time; visited a couple more gold postboxes; we went to our friends Jamie and Mat’s civil partnership last weekend and then this weekend, Jessica helped Uncle Adrian celebrate his 50th birthday. We are blessed with a very sociable baby – she loves watching people and is quite content to be passed around for cuddles!


We have now been given a date for the cardiac catheter procedure – we will be going into Southampton next Monday (1st October) ready for the procedure to take place on 2nd October. This will be measuring the pressure in the blood vessels around Jessica’s heart – hopefully the results will continue to show that Jessica is doing well. Her oxygen saturation levels are still looking good and staying in the mid 80s.


We also have a couple more hospital appointments over the next week – an ophthalmology appointment to review her squint and an audiology follow-up to re-test Jessica’s hearing (last time there was fluid in the ear and she wasn’t responding to lower-frequency sounds). Please could you keep our little girl in your thoughts and prayers over the next week or so as we make our various trips to different hospitals. We will let you know how she gets on with them all.

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