Support Heavenly Hearts Foundation

I am raising money for the Heavenly Hearts Foundation and will be running the Carmel Marathon on Saturday, April 16th in support of the foundation.  This Foundation was recently set up by my brother (Jason Bobay) and my Sister-In-Law (Laura Bobay).  Their mission is to provide emotional and financial support to parents, families, and survivors of congenital heart defects.  I am dedicating miles18 to 26.2 to my niece Isabella.  An 8 mile personal journey. 


You might be asking, "How did this foundation come to be?"  Well it started with the birth of my niece Isabella. My brother kept a blog on her progress because she had a few complicated heart issues she was dealing with. Unfortunately, the complications were too difficult to overcome and she passed away on August 26th, 2015.

Coping from the loss of a child is something I can't explain.  But I know that my brother and his wife are going through it.  They never want to forget their daughter.  Even though she is physically gone, they want to keep her spirit alive so that her story can inspire and touch the lives of others.  I remember Jason telling me that he talked to my Dad about the challenge he was having grieving the loss of Isabella.  My Dad told him that maybe he should just keep writing.  So my brother did and he wrote a very special children's book which will soon be released titled: “My Guardian Angel”.  It tells the short story of a young boy explaining to his little sister about his guardian angel, who happens to be their sister that passed away when she was just a baby.  The characters in the book were intended to resemble my brother and sister-in-law’s kids.  It was only a matter of time after the book was written that my brother and his wife realized that the best way for their daughter’s legacy to live on would be through a foundation.  Their mission would be to provide support for other families and kids that were dealing with the complicated journey that comes with congenital heart defects. 

For more information about Heavenly Hearts Foundation, please visit the website at:
 
www.heavenlyheartsfoundation.org



Below is the start of my brother's blog.
 
Aug 21, 2016 by Jason Bobay
 
My name is Isabella Lauren Bobay.  I was born on August 19th, 2015.  I weighed in at 5 lbs. 8 oz and 18 inches tall.  Some of you might be surprised to see me.  Let me explain my journey so far.

16 weeks into my mommy’s pregnancy my heart rate dropped from 120 to 60 beats per minute.  The doctors told my parents that things didn’t look good and they thought I wasn’t going to make it.  There was too much fluid forming around the heart and it was likely that I was going to go into heart failure.  My parents didn’t give up on me though and went to the doctor every week for 19 weeks straight to check and see if a heart beat was still there.  They showed up at week 20 to meet with the cardiologist because this was the first opportunity to get a good look at the electrical structure of the heart to better understand what was wrong.  Everyone was really shocked to see my mom and dad at that appointment because no one thought I was going to be around. At this appointment, it was confirmed that I had 1.) Left Heterotaxy Syndrome  2.) Heart Block  3.) Narrowing of the pulmonary ventricle.  This was quite overwhelming for my parents to hear.  The odds of getting Heterotaxy is 4 in 1,000,000.  Not the type of lottery that my parents were hoping to hit.  They thought everything was going great up to this point with the pregnancy, and the doctors just slammed them with what appeared to be a death sentence.  I wasn’t scared though.  I had so many people praying for me that it didn’t really matter what the doctors said.  I wasn’t going anywhere!  My dad told those doctors that they better get used to seeing us because we plan on sticking around for awhile.  Little did those smart doctors know that I would be holding that 55-60 heart beats per minute for a long, long time.

Once the 30th week of the pregnancy came around my parents were able to set the date for a scheduled C-section.  My mommy got her way and was able to schedule my arrival on September 10th.  I had other plans though.  On August 18th, we had a cardiologist appointment to check my heart out to make sure everything looked normal, relative to all the issues I had going.  There was some fluid that showed up in my stomach on the ultrasound.  The cardiologist was pretty concerned, but thought I would be better off staying in my mommy’s tummy rather then trying to deliver me and immediately placing a pacemaker in a 35-week old baby.  I decided to make my mom miserable that night and give her some of the worst back pain she has ever had.  She woke up the next day and decided to go to the doctor to get things checked out.  They hooked her up on the monitor and found out that she was having contractions that are 5 minutes apart.  They sent my mom to the hospital and I think you have probably figured out the rest of the story from there…

To continue on with the blog, please click on the link www.heavenlyheartsfoundation.org, go to Our Mission, and click on the pink Belive in Bella button.