Yesterday, as I unbuckled Mary Clare from her car seat, I brushed her blonde hair aside to straighten the shoulder straps.\u00a0\u00a0 As she leaned to help me, I noticed them.\u00a0 She was positioned just right and the sun hit her face and neck so that I could see the tiny marks on her neck, invisible to most.\u00a0 Only I would notice.\u00a0 Only I would know what they are.<\/p>\n
Her tiny body has been through so much and thankfully she doesn’t remember most of it.\u00a0 What is left behind are the scars of her fight.<\/p>\n
The tiny scars on her neck are from central IV lines.\u00a0 She has various marks and scars all over her body from years of hospital admittances and three open-heart surgeries.\u00a0 Her claim to fame and tell-tale “zipper” are quite obvious and she has no qualms about her little half-heart.\u00a0 She will tell just about anyone who will listen that she does, in fact, have a broken heart.\u00a0 She’s quite proud.<\/p>\n
Everyday life gets in the way, and I often forget about my little girl’s fragile heart.\u00a0 I watch her Five and half years ago, I dreamed of this.<\/p>\n I could only pray for one milestone for her.\u00a0 Birth. I asked God to please allow me to see her face once.<\/p>\n It seemed too much to ask for her survival, for her to even thrive.\u00a0 I prayed over and over, “Your Will be done.\u00a0 Your Will be done.”<\/p>\n It is what got me through every moment.\u00a0 Every day.<\/p>\n Tonight, I sent an email to a new “heart mom.”\u00a0 A friend of a friend, and Hartsville family, too.\u00a0 I was thrown back into all of those emotions and memories of what seems like forever ago.\u00a0 She will have her first child in January, a baby boy with HLHS.<\/p>\n It is a journey that will take every ounce of courage and strength you have, but it will also teach you more about God and life than you can ever imagine.\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, Jennifer, for allowing me to share Mary Clare with you and for another little reminder to thank God for everything that she has given us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, as I unbuckled Mary Clare from her car seat, I brushed her blonde hair aside to straighten the shoulder straps.\u00a0\u00a0 As she leaned to help me, I noticed them.\u00a0 She was positioned just right and the sun hit her face and neck so that I could see the tiny marks on her neck, invisible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8388,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8387\/revisions\/8388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/del>play soccer and take gymnastics.\u00a0 I fuss with her about leaving her Barbie clothes all over the place.\u00a0 She rolls her eyes at me, trying to be like her big sister<\/em>, and she has tantrums.\u00a0 She sneaks into our bed at night after McCanless has fallen asleep.\u00a0 She never leaves her braids or ponytails in her hair and would eat candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I allowed it.<\/p>\n