Please donate to the Sextons to help raise money for their sons 2nd open heart surgery! See story below!

1 year ago today these 2 pink lines changed my life. This wasn't in my plan. This "couldn't" happen, it wasn't possible. I was still angry with God for taking a baby from me, I was angry with him for not giving me another baby when WE wanted it-when it was our time. After loosing our 2nd baby my doctor told me I would never be able to get pregnant again. We tried and tried and tried. Every month that one pink line slapped me in the face. Reality check Kristen, you can't have another kid, the doctor said so. But guess what? Doctors aren't God. He always has a bigger plan. After a year of trying and failing, we accepted that our daughter would be our only child. We were finally content with our family the way it was and decided to move on from the idea of having another child. Fast forward 5 months. Here came the 2 pink lines that we had prayed for for so long. We were going to have another baby!! Our dream of being a family of 4 is coming true. Then the first prenatal check up came, the doctor started rambling on about how the baby was measuring too small and the vitals didn't look good, I lost her at that. Our baby ended up being just fine, perfectly healthy. Then we found out he was a boy. A perfect beautiful little boy. Our boy. On January 18th, 2016 Tucker was born. He was healthy and perfect in every way. On January 27th, 2016 at 9 days old he woke up with a swollen red eye. Our household had just passed around a case of the pink eye, so I immediately called his pediatrician to schedule an appointment. His pediatrician was out for the day and the other doctor in the office was all booked up. I talked to the nurse for a few minutes on the phone-at first writing the eye off to a clogged tear duct and decided to treat it at home and give it a few days. However, something didn't feel right to me (motherly instincts maybe) so I called back and his nurse squeezed me in on the schedule for the end of that afternoon. Throughout the day Tucker stopped eating, and basically slept all day. I immediately addressed these issues with his doctor when we got to our appointment, she also noticed that his breathing was retracting. Tucker was placed on a pulse oximeter to check his oxygen levels. After listening to his heart, watching his breaths and his oxygen level being at 80 we were ran down to the emergency department that is connected to their office. We were met by a team of doctors and nurses and a bunch of machines and crazy words that we had never heard of. Tucker had an X-ray and the doctor found a hazy area around his lungs. Presbyterian hospital is not equip with the right machines to do ekgs on infants hearts, so all the doctor could tell us was that they haze was a sign of a heart defect but he couldn't tell me what was causing it. We were care-flighted to Cook Children's Hospital within an hour.  By the time we arrived, Tucker had gone into respiratory distress and heart failure. After running multiple tests the cardiologist was able to find a coarctation of the aorta, narrowing up higher on his aorta, and a heart murmur. Within 2 hours of being at Cook Children's we were faced with shocking news. Our 9 day old had to have open heart surgery. Tucker had almost lost complete blood and oxygen flow to the bottom half of his body. We were told that if it weren't for the eye infection and us taking him to the doctor that afternoon that Tucker wouldn't have made it through the night. We wouldn't of had any real signs that anything was wrong. We were faced with the grim reality that we almost lost our baby. 

Doctors were able to stabilize Tucker to get him through the weekend and on February 1st our 2 week old had open heart surgery. We found out about 6 hours after surgery that Tuckers vocal chord was paralyzed during the procedure. We were devastated to say the least. Tucker also responded horribly to being extubated and couldn't breathe on his own. He was on oxygen for an additional 5 days. We weren't able to hold or feed our son for 10 days. We spent 17 days in the hospital recovering. On February 25th we found out that the surgeon wasn't able to repair the entire aortic valve and he still had severe narrowing that would require a second surgery in addition to his mitral valve being to small, severe secondary hypertension, and a blood clot in his neck. We schedule surgery for April 15th. After the cardiologist discussed the surgery with his board and with the surgeon, they all decided it was in Tuckers best interest to wait on the surgery so that his scar tissue from the 1st surgery would have time to heal. The second surgery was cancelled. Tucker has been growing like a weed, he is the happiest baby you have ever met. He loves his sissy, loves his food, you would never guess by looking at him that he has heart disease. We have to constantly monitor him for heart failure, he takes blood pressure medicine twice a day and his blood pressure is still uncontrolled. Tucker had a bad spell of sleep apnea on May 31st, he stopped breathing and we were yet again rushed to Cook Children's. Unfortunately the second surgery can't wait. We are having to push the date up ASAP and this procedure will require a 6 week hospital stay recovery. We are currently doing physical therapy and due to his vocal chord paralysis he will have to have speech therapy as well. Tucker has been such a champ through all of this. My heart breaks daily for him. All we can do is ask for prayers, we need all the support possible. Please pray for his sissy who has not handled this well, and for us.