A Sister's Eyes

Kellen was born in 1991 with a serious heart defect as well as Hirschsprung disease (a birth defect of his colon). At the time he was born, my daughter was just over three years old. I was a stay-at-home mom and so she had me all to herself...until her brother arrived. We were constantly at the hospital that first month while he had a colostomy put in and had a closed-heart surgery.

Having mom and dad gone so much was really hard on her. She stayed a lot with her grandparents or went to friend's houses while we went back and forth to the hospital. Finally at about a month old, Kellen was stable enough to come home with us and we were able to get settled into our new life together. Well...as settled as a family who is waiting for open-heart surgery can get.

At six months old he had gained enough weight that it was time to go back to the hospital to have his heart repaired through open-heart surgery. I felt that having had six months together we had emotionally bonded and I knew that meant this surgery would be harder on all of us.

Kellen sailed through the five and a half hours of surgery and the outcome was even better than we had hoped. However, we thought we had mentally prepared ourselves for how Kellen would look afterwards, but it was still very hard to see him with so many tubes and wires. He was breathing through a ventilator and his eyes were taped shut so that they wouldn't dry out. His wrists and ankles were tied to his crib with soft straps so that he wouldn't accidentally pull on any of the tubes or wires. Not that he was about to pull anything out as he was heavily sedated. Even though it was hard to see our baby like this, we were encouraged by the fact that for the first time in his life his complexion was pink.

We felt strongly that we didn't want D.Q. to see her brother until he was looking much better. We planned to wait a few days or weeks when, hopefully, he would have some of the tubes and wires out. By this time she had had six months to get to know her brother and we felt it might be traumatic for her to see him with so much machinery hooked up to him.

The day after his surgery we were with family in the waiting room and Sweet Husband and I started to head into the Intensive Care Unit to visit Kellen. D.Q. started to have a major meltdown as she felt that we were leaving her again and insisted that she go too. We made a quick decision to let her come with us, but a big part of us felt that it might be a mistake.

After the three of us scrubbed up, we slowly carried D.Q. over to her brother's crib. We waited tentitively for any kind of reaction from her, but there was none. We gently asked her what she thought of her brother and she replied in her chipper little three-year-old voice, "He looks GREAT!"

We learned some lessons that day. We learned to never underestimate our daughter. We learned to listen to what she says she needs. Most of all, we learned that the eyes through which she sees her brother are filled with love.