Thanksgiving

This time last year we had a lot to be thankful for. I was nearing the halfway mark in my pregnancy and we were just a few days away from our official 20 week anatomy scan. We had also just discovered that we were expecting another boy and had decided to name him Kyle. Life was good. 

Little did we know, our lives were about to change forever. In spite of a completely normal 20 week scan, we would discover a short 8 weeks later that our baby boy had significant brain damage. The corpus callosum, the largest bundle of fibers within the brain that connect the right and left hemispheres, was completely missing. He had extensive areas of cortical dysplasia- areas with abnormal brain folding. He also had a very large interhemispheric cyst growing in his brain causing mass effect on the surrounding tissue and had hydrocephalus as a result. No one knew what life would be like for our baby. 

If you had told us last year the journey we were about to embark on- that our baby would need two brain surgeries, 13 MRIs, 5 hospitalizations and 7 ER visits just within his first six months- we would imagine this Thanksgiving to be a somber one. But a little bit of perspective changes things. A little bit of hope changes things. And that smile? That smile changes EVERYTHING. 

We are blessed. 

Happy Thanksgiving!