heart mom/regular mom

I am a heart mom to a two year old daughter with PAIVS and I also have a 9 month old son with a healthy heart.  I created this blog because as a new mom I have found it unbelievably helpful to read other people's writing about motherhood.  But being a heart mom can sometimes feel a little different from being a "regular" mom.  I have oftentimes wished I could find other heart moms websites who are lucky enough, like me, to be off their care page (for now anyway) and are raising their heart kids and their healthy kids -- and just trying to hang in there with it all.

We're not that different from any other family except that we do always have our daughter's heart condition in the back or front of our mind (depending on the day) and it's probably fair to say that the first year of our daughter's life likely gave my husband and I a few more grey hairs than the average parent.  While our lives are not currently in complete and utter chaos because of our child's heart condition -- they sure as hell have been in the past and god willing it won't ever get that bad again anytime soon.   I am unbelievably fortunate that I don't have to update a care page about my daughter on a regular basis right now and therefore I feel like this blog is a more fair representation of my family's day-to-day existence.  We've thankfully moved out of the crisis mode in which we started our family with and we now live with many of the struggles and joys that everybody else lives with - the four of us just do it with a collective seven and half ventricles instead of eight.

So, we live a little bit differently in that it's been a tough road to get to where we are today, but not nearly as tough as we maybe originally expected.  We spend a lot of time feeling unbelievably grateful and blessed that we've made it through all that we have.  But as grateful and appreciative as we are -- we're admittedly just as tired, stressed out and exhausted as any other parent with young kids is on any given weeknight or day that ends in "y".

Our kids are exactly a year and half apart in age -- almost to the day.  That by itself is a challenge.  But I have to say, especially now that I have my healthy heart son, I am completely amazed and in awe of just how awesome it is to have a healthy child from birth.  I feel so unbelievably appreciative of both of my kids and what my family has been through in the past two and half years that I feel compelled to write about it.  If not for the camaraderie some other heart mom might gain from reading this (or any mother for that matter), but also for my kids and for me.  Who knows -- maybe it'll be nice for them to read someday about our day-to-day when they were little and it might not be a bad thing for me to reflect on things every once and a while given how crazy our lives are and how hard it is right now to relish in the "present".  Hence, the creation of this blog.

I am so lucky that my two year old daughter is doing as well as she is with her diagnosis and that my son is happy and healthy 9 month old.  I only just came up for air enough that I feel like I can finally take a minute or two (who am I kidding this will probably be my one and only post because I have no idea how I found the time to even figure out how to set this thing up) to reflect on everything that's happened and everything that lies ahead.