CHD Awareness Week!

This week is congenital heart defect awareness week. I still can not believe that my family has been affected by this terrible disease. Every day I have hope for my sweet little Tyler who was born with a severe heart defect. Just to give you a better idea of how many kids are affected by heart defects here are some statistics:

*Every fifteen minutes a baby is born with a CHD.

*Congenital heart defects are America’s #1 birth defect. Nearly one of every 125 babies is born with a CHD (almost 1% of all children born each year!).

*Congenital heart defects are the #1 cause of birth defect related deaths. 1 in 3 children who die from a birth defect have a congenital heart defect.

*This year almost 40,000 babies will be born with a congenital heart defect.

*In the U.S. twice as many children die from congenital heart defects each year than from all forms of childhood cancer combined. Yet funding for research of pediatric cancer is 5 times greater.

*From 1993 to 2003 death rates for congenital heart defects have declined by 31% due to advances made through research!

*There is not yet a preventative cure for any type of congenital heart defect.

*Of every dollar the government spends on medical funding, only a fraction of a penny is directed toward congenital heart defect research.

Hopefully by helping to bring awareness we might be able to find cures and give new hope to all of the sweet babies who have to fight and struggle so hard to live.

Here are a few pics of our heart baby over the last 11 months of his precious life!! We love you!

Tyler - March 6 ,2009, just a couple of hours after he was born.

March 9, 2009 - First open heart surgery, the Norwood Procedure

Recovering from the Norwood in the ICU

Our little blueberry - post Norwood. Feeling good!!


July 29, 2009 Tyler had his Glenn Procedure. Poor little guy - trying to recover.


Happy to be back home with no surgeries for a while.

Our sweet little Tyler at 10 months - happy as can be!!