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, 18 August 2013

On the news and out and about


Jessica has had a busy time recently being out and about. Earlier this month, she made a brief appearance on the BBC Six O’Clock news in a feature about Tesco trying to attract shoppers to their big stores. One of the things they are doing locally is providing a community space for local groups, and our Tiny Talk teacher will be running classes there which was why we were being featured on the news. If you didn’t get a brief glimpse of Jessica on the news, you can see the video clip again here on the BBC news website – we are onscreen for a couple of seconds about 30 seconds in.


Jessica has been enjoying catching up with various friends and family members and meeting others for the very first time. She thoroughly enjoyed attending cousin Meryl’s birthday afternoon tea (the chocolate éclairs went down very well!) and meeting her baby cousin Elisabetta for the first time. A huge thank you to Meryl for raising £335 as a result of her birthday tea which she has chosen to share between the Salvation Army Kids’ Club and Little Hearts Matter – thank you Meryl! 

 
 

We had a lovely day out at the Friends of PICU family fun day yesterday and enjoyed spending time with godmummy Katy. There were a few familiar faces there that we recognised from Jessica’s various stays on PICU and it was lovely to see Mark, the PICU ambulance driver who transported Jessica in the blue pod from Southampton to Oxford when she was three weeks old and we also saw Chris, one of the nurses who has looked after Jessica on PICU. Jessica took part in the fancy dress competition and her octopus costume won her first prize in the 0-2 age group category! It was also lovely to meet fellow heart mummy Freya and beautiful heart baby Erin whose journey we have been following for some time and who thankfully is doing very well following her second stage surgery.




We are missing Daddy at the moment as he is away working on an event in Cologne but Auntie Twinny and cousins Ebony and Erin have come to stay while he is away and Jessica is having a lovely time with her cousins. She managed to say ‘Ebony’ this afternoon which we were very impressed by and has been amusing her cousins by showing them her repertoire of animal noises – our current favourite is her little lion roar which is very cute!


Three of her canine teeth have now appeared and the fourth looks pretty imminent – apart from wanting to chew on all her toys, Jessica seems to be coping well with the current round of teething and has generally carried on being her usual happy self throughout with only a few grumpy moments when her teeth are clearly bothering her.

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