Every 2.5 minutes

Our shirts arrived today. My family is participating in a run/walk for the heart and stroke foundation. My cousin in law and myself are doing the 10 k run while everyone else is doing a 5k walk. I ordered shirts online from hopeforhlhs.com and I'm so happy they've arrived with a month to spare. Looking at these shirts makes me really sad though.

How did I get here? I think back to last year when we'd just started trying and can't believe where we are now. We were so naive, carefree and stupid. Stupid for thinking bad things couldn't happen to us. The thing is I don't know anyone who hasn't had a healthy baby.  I'd heard horror stories about babies with problems and all I really thought about was downs syndrome. My doctor scared me a few days before my 18 week ultrasound because he phoned and left a message about the results from my triple screen. It took him forever to say the results were good and we had nothing to worry about. I'm sure the message was actually less then 30 seconds but I was so scared and worried since he told me he wouldn't call unless there was a problem! I thought I was good after hearing that. I thought it was all set and we'd have a healthy beautiful baby in a few months like everyone else. That feeling when you hear there is something seriously wrong with your baby, I can't describe it. I guess the best way is you can almost feel your whole world falling apart. I don't remember too much of our long 2 hour conversation with the team of doctors. All I remember is staring at the picture I'd just received of our baby and then after awhile not being able to look at it (I think I actually turned it over) because all I wanted to do was cry. It took having an HLHS baby to realize that like the shirt says "every 2.5 minutes a baby is born with a congenital heart defect." About 1 in 100.

I don't know how people do it. I don't know how women find the strength to go through labour knowing what the baby is up against. I didn't like being pregnant with Hailey.  I took it all for granted, but the moment I found out she was sick I wanted her to be able to stay in me forever. I knew I could only protect her for so long.  Now, I'd go through years of morning sickness to bring her back and have her healthy. 

I'm going to end this now before Dan walks in and sees me crying. I've convinced him to buy a doppler for our next pregnancy. It won't change anything and it won't tell us anything since Hailey's heart sounded normal but I've been really anxious the past couple weeks. 2 girls I'm close with from work are due to have babies soon and I'm so terrified for them. I don't know if I'll be able to make it 40 weeks with our next baby. I'm all too aware of how quickly things can go wrong.