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.

Friday, 8 February 2013

17 months - check-up at Oxford




Jessica had another check-up at Oxford this afternoon and the echo has shown that her heart function is good at present.  Her sats have been stable in the low 80s and thankfully we have not had any more trips to Wexham Park with various winter bugs!  She is gaining weight brilliantly at the moment – her latest weigh-in showed that she is now 9.56kg (21lb) – a gain of more than a pound since she was last weighed a month ago!  


We seem to be finally having a break from teething and Jessica has managed a couple of nights of sleeping most of the night (Mummy and Daddy have so much more energy as a result!) – we had a grand total of nine teeth making their appearance over a seven-week period, five of which appeared in the space of ten days!  With teething as in many other things, Jessica likes to do things in her own way – the second top front tooth was the last to appear which is definitely not the ‘usual’ order suggested in the books.


 Jessica is getting very confident cruising around the furniture – she isn’t quite standing unsupported yet but is definitely getting much steadier on her feet.  She has started using the baby walker at Grandma’s house and has worked out how to get around quite quickly on that!  She is also starting to work out how to eat with a spoon – getting a pre-loaded spoon into her mouth is easy enough but she hasn’t quite worked out how to get food from bowl to spoon to mouth!


In the last few weeks, Jessica is becoming more and more chatty which is just delightful.  We have yet to be fluent in Jessica-speak but it is lovely to watch her chatting on the phone or ‘reading’ her books aloud.


We have also received a few more donations for Friends of PICU from people who were unable to come to our fundraising concert due to the snowy weather so the total raised as a result of the concert is now up to £740 which is absolutely amazing.  A huge thank you to everyone who supported this.  

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