Assistance for Isabella Puffpaff and family

Isabella (Izzy) Penelope Puffpaff born 1/16/21 at 1:55 p.m. 6 lbs 14 oz and 20.25 inches long. Thank you for taking time to learn about Isabella. Paul and Elizabeth (Liz) have been so blessed to have Isabella in their lives. This is Isabella's story told by Liz. 

When I was about 15 1/2 weeks pregnant Paul and I found out Isabella had fluid around her lung and heart and eventually in her belly and we were told she would never make it to term. Isabella has defied the odds! The fluid cleared up slowly throughout the pregnancy and things were looking "stable", which was the best thing to hear. Isabella was prenatally diagnosed with a ventricular septal defect (VSD) and an atrial septal defect (ASD), but the pediatric cardiologist said they looked mild and are common so he didn't anticipate any immediate care needed at birth. During labor there were some signs that Isabella wasn't handling labor too well and I did not progress after several hours so I elected for a c-section. Isabella was not breathing when she was born and was immediately intubated and taken to the NICU. It was there that they discovered her heart had a narrowing in the aortic arch called a coarctation and she would need heart surgery before she could go home. We were also informed that she had a large VSD and a small VSD along with the ASD they had seen parentally, which was more significant than initially expected. They also found out that her left kidney was possibly only 10-20% functional and her right kidney may not be functional at all. That was all news to us. Had she only had the heart condition it would have been easier to treat without the kidney issues and vise versa. Eventually, about a month later, she was transferred to a children's hospital. They decided it was best to place a peritoneal dialysis catheter and do open heart surgery to repair everything all at once. She did well with the surgery and they started dialysis to help take off additional fluid. On a repeat echo, about 2 weeks later, they noticed the narrowing they fixed had healed, but as it did it also re-narrowed down. The plan is to take her to the Cath lab to perform a procedure to balloon open the narrowing and remove the PD catheter about 6 weeks post operative. She slowly recovered and we had made it to the progressive unit, which was one step closer to going home. We were only on the progressive unit for one day before Isabella had an episode of respiratory distress and had to be re-intubated. They suspect infection so they are trying to get everything under control and figure out what caused all of this. She has been in the hospital since she was born. We hope to be able to get her to a good place and be able to get her home as soon as safely possible. Any donations will help with medical bills, transportation, food, bill, etc. If you would like to continue to follow her story visit Isabella 's Site: https://caringbridge.org/visit/babypuffpaff