7 years ago

Seven years ago was a really hard time in my life. My 16 year old niece died and it was a really, really sad time for our whole family.

I was in the 4th grade when Ash was born to my middle brother and his sweet wife. I was SOOOO excited to be an aunt.  

I pretended she was MY little dolly and when she got older, she didn't like it very much. She was an awesome girl with beautiful smile!

I still miss her so much and I know I will get to be with her again.

I was also pregnant with my first child during this time. We had gone through infertility treatments and testing and it finally worked! We were thrilled to be getting a baby!

We went in for my 20 week ultra-sound 7 years ago today.

Right after the ultra-sound we were going to leave to Montana for Ashlee's funeral.

 I remember the tech looking at her face for a long time.....then he went on to her bottom and told us we were having a little girl. We were so excited. Then he kept going back to study her little face. He finally told us that he was a little concerned about the large dark area at her mouth and told us that he thought she had a cleft lip.

It really hit me hard because Ashlee was also born with a facial birth defect and I had seen how much she had had to go through. He tried to comfort me by telling me that there was a really good plastic surgeon at Primary Children's hospital named Dr. Morales. He was also Ashlee's doctor and had done several surgeries on her when she was little. 

I was crying really hard and felt so very scared for my precious little girl and all that she would have to endure. The poor ultra-sound tech asked me how my niece was doing now and I told him we were just leaving for her funeral. After carefully looking at all of her other organs to make sure there were no other obvious problems, He went and got my family doctor and Dr. Smith took us into a room and hugged me while I cried and tried his best to offer comforting words to us.

We went through many other ultra-sounds and tests and our little Shaylee (spelled with the "lee"

on the end after Ashlee) was born in September.

She was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. She is also missing her corpus callousum and her septum pellucidum is malformed. (They are the parts of the brain) Shaylee is such a special little girl and I wouldn't change her for the world! She is now 6 years old and brings such joy into our home. Every year on this anniversary, all of those memories from 7 years ago come back to me so strong. It was such a hard time then, but now it is easier to think of all of the things we went through to have this little girl in our lives. I believe that she has her big cousin watching over her all of the time.