Three years on from the first step

It is three years today since Jessica took the first step along her journey with the success of the second attempt at fetal surgery.  We will always be incredibly thankful to the fabulous team of consultants who were involved in that surgery and helped give us hope, and to all of our friends and family who surrounded us with their love and prayers and have continued to do so.  We recently attended the Churches Together in Uxbridge (CTU) AGM with Jessica and Sophie.  The CTU prayed for us as a family at their AGM three years ago and it was lovely to be able to share Jessica’s story again with them and show how God answered that prayer.  What a huge blessing it is to be able to watch Jessica grow and thrive three years on.

  

We have been making the most of the lovely weather over the last couple of weeks with lots of different outings as well as enjoying time just playing in the garden.  We have visited Paulton’s Park and Peppa Pig World with other Ocean Ward families and saw two other children, Jack and Eli, who were in hospital at the same time as Jessica.  It is always lovely to catch up with other heart families and see how well the children are doing having last seen each other in hospital.

Jessica and Sophie also enjoyed going to see In the Night Garden Live in Richmond and meeting Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy afterwards.  We have had a day out at Legoland with Grandma and been to stay with Nanny for a few days, catching up with aunties, uncles and cousins there.

Today we have enjoyed a day out at the Charlie Jones Foundation family fun day where we enjoyed spending time with godmummy Katy and seeing some other heart families there too – Donna and Lily; and Freya, Lee, Noah and Erin (who is a fellow HLHS warrior).  Jessica and Erin had a little cuddle and it was lovely to see how well both girls are getting on.

First holiday abroad

 

We have been enjoying our first holiday abroad as a family – a road trip around France, Monaco, Italy and Belgium with a trip to the Channel Islands thrown in too.  Here’s a brief summary of our holiday in numbers:

12 days

5 countries

6 ferry crossings

9 hotels

60 hours of travelling (49 by car, 11 by boat)

2113 miles of driving
 

Jessica coped fairly well with all the travelling about – downloading her favourite CBeebies programmes onto the iPod helped out quite a lot with this although we discovered very early on that her favourite programmes are no longer what we thought they were – Mr Tumble is out and Mister Maker is in. It meant she ended up watching the same three episodes over and over quite a few times but it made some of the longer drives much more bearable for her.  Sophie also coped quite well with the travelling (mostly tending to drift off to sleep during the journeys despite Jessica’s best attempts to wake her up by prodding her with various toys!)

We have visited our penultimate Olympic postbox on Sark and just have the Isle of Man left on the list now.  Our journey to Sark from France involved four ferry crossings and much juggling to get two small children, several bags and a buggy down some rather narrow gangplanks and steep steps!  Somehow we managed it – and we had a lovely day on Sark exploring the island.  Jessica enjoyed being able to run about without having to worry about cars and had a ride on a horse and cart which was fun.

Whilst we were in France, we visited the Bayeux Tapestry, saw the start of the D-Day 70th anniversary commemorations in St Mère-Eglise, visted Château de Villandry, crossed the Viaduc de Millau and visited our friends Simon and Jo in Aix-en-Provence – who got to meet Jessica and Sophie for the first time.  Jessica dipped her foot into the sea at Cannes but wasn’t too impressed about it although she did enjoy the ‘big bath’ (otherwise known as a swimming pool) in the hotel in Aix-en-Provence although couldn’t stay in it very long as the water was unheated and a bit on the chilly side.   We took a trip around the Formula 1 circuit in Monaco, stayed overnight in the Italian Riveria and then headed back to France (with a final overnight stop in Belgium) before we got the ferry back home again.  

The weather was very hot for the second half of our trip (reaching 40˚C when we were in Dijon) – thankfully there was air conditioning in the car and the hotel and Jessica coped well with the heat (we made sure she was well hydrated and she also got to enjoy lots of ice cream to help keep her cool too!).  Jessica discovered a packet of chocolate rice cakes in a bag in the back of the car at one point on our travels which she proceeded to open and eat – covering herself and the car seat in melted chocolate (and then before we had a chance to clean her off properly, threw herself on the nice clean white sheets on our hotel bed and covered them in chocolate too!)  She also had to manage without her glasses for most of our trip as there was some minor damage to them (which got fixed after we arrived home - somehow holidays seem to be the perfect time for these things to happen!)

Jessica has been a little subdued since getting home as she is full of cold and has also come up in a bit of a rash on her legs and arms – the doctor has diagnosed a virus and prescribed some cream to soothe it – hopefully it will disappear very soon and thankfully doesn’t seem to be bothering her too much.  Otherwise she’s been enjoying being out and about in the sunshine and got her face painted for the first time today (which she loved) at the local infant school fair.