Saturday, February 14, 2009

Hug them tighter, squeeze them longer, and love them just a little more each day.

This week is CHD Awareness Week. Congenital Heart Defects affect 1 in every 100 babies, that's 40,000 a year in the United States alone. Congenital heart defects are the leading cause of all infant deaths in the United States. Each year over 1,000,000 babies are born worldwide with a congenital heart defect. 100,000 of them will not live to see their first birthday and thousands more die before they reach adulthood. In the United States, twice as many children die from congenital heart defects each year than from all forms of childhood cancer combined, yet funding for pediatric cancer research is five times higher than funding for CHD. Congenital heart defects are common and deadly, yet CHD research is grossly under-funded relative to the prevalence of the disease.Only one penny of every dollar donated to the American Heart Association goes towards congenital heart defect research.Of every dollar the government spends on medical funding only a fraction of a penny is directed toward congenital heart defect research.(Source: Children's Heart Foundation)Our babies depend on awareness, which will raise funding, which through research, will save so many lives! If you tell just one person about CHD that is one more person that is aware of it, and that just might save one life.Today Curtis and Stacy are holding a "heart" party for Hadleigh. Hadleigh is my great-niece who was born with a CHD called Hypoplasty Left Heart Syndrome, which means part of her heart is missing. It can be repaired with a series of surgeries, I believe 3, she has had the first stage,and it waiting on the second stage. She is such a good baby. I call her the Mighty One. We are going to the heart party tonight. I have wanted to make something for Haddie for a long time. I didn't quite know how, or what I wanted to do. Well, with my trusty Cricut and SCAL program, I made her a word book of her name (well, HADDIE because I didn't have paper long enough to cut HADLEIGH). Here it is,

sorry for the weird colors. (The book is sky blue, brown, pink,and lime green). I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day. Happy Heart Day Haddie! We love you mighty one.

Love,

whimp and family

1 comment:

Cindy said...

I have a friend in Glenweird that has a son that had the same defect this little girl has. He is now 12. He had to go to Texas for all his treatments. I think kids in this area are lucky it can be treated here.