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.

Thursday 3 March 2016

Back home again

Jessica is now back home after spending a couple of nights in hospital. She needed oxygen the first night and her temperature went back up again so was given IV antibiotics (and was very brave about having the cannula put in for these). By Tuesday afternoon, her sats were staying up for longer and longer without the need for additional oxygen (even hitting 87 for a brief period mid-afternoon before dropping back down to around 78-80 which is much more normal for Jessica) and it was good to see her much more like her normal self by Wednesday morning when we were finally discharged from the hospital.


We have a check-up with the paediatrician at Wexham Park next week and a cardiac check-up at the end of this month so hopefully Jessica’s sats will stay up and all will go well with these. In the meantime, she is enjoying having godmummy Gillian here to stay for a few days and being back home with Sophie.


Thank you to everyone for all your well wishes over the last few days. All being well, I’ll update again once we’ve had our cardiac check-up.

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