Wordless Wednesday: Happy Birthday, My Miracle

This is really a Wordful Wednesday instead of Wordless Wednesday.  This one is for my baby girl who is turning 2 on Halloween.  We call her our holiday baby (also miracle baby) because she was born on Halloween and came home from the hospital on New Years Day.  Yes, that's 9 weeks almost to the day in the hospital.  It was actually 8 weeks and 6 days.  Here's the first picture and story behind her miraculous two years of life.

I was 30 weeks pregnant and someone that I had seen the week before said, man you really look like you have dropped.  It was a Tuesday, I remember that day pretty well.  You always hear you remember when something tragic happens like 9/11, I remember exactly what I was doing, when Kennedy was shot my parents remember exactly what they were doing.  For some reason the birth of my children have really stuck out in my mind especially the birth of Mattyson Marie Herrington.  I still had 10 weeks before I was due but that Tuesday night I started to have contractions and around midnight decided to go to the hospital.  The next morning I called the nurses and told them I needed to push, I can't wait any longer I have to push.  So they told me I needed to wait for my doctor, who was actually sleeping in the room next to mine because this was very high risk at this point.  I told them I can't wait and when they told me to put my legs up they wanted to check me they kind of freaked and said ok, she's coming out now.  That's the nice clean version that I will keep it at for you. :)

This is her first day of life and this is how tiny she was.  Within the first week of being born she had to have a PDA Ligation and for those of you who don't know (don't worry, I didn't until she had to have one), there is a valve that is open in utero that pumps blood from mom to baby, when baby is born the valve closes automatically but when a baby is so premature and even if they are full term it sometimes doesn't close.  That is what happened with Matty.  They gave us the option to give her medicine like Motrin or do surgery on her heart and put a staple there to close the valve.  After research, prayer, and talking with the doctors and nurses we decided on the surgery because hers was so open that they medicine was very likely not going to work.

This is her first outfit that she wore which is actually a doll Gerber outfit.

Yes, she is in her stocking.  This a stocking from Walmart that are not the full size.

This is her first birthday, last year.  She still looks so tiny for being one.

Here she is this summer!  She had an evaluation done with some early development people and she tested higher then her actually age at the time.  She should have tested a few months behind but was ahead.  That's my girl!

This is my favorite most recent picture of her.  Our babysitter is in photography school so she likes to practice on Matty.  I'm ok with that.

Thank you for reading this.

I love you, Mattyson.  You truly are my miracle baby and my gift from God.

Check out more Wordless Wednesday, here.