Hello, my name is Maliah. I was born on 3-4-15 at 7:55am by emergency cesarian section. I weighed in at 5lb .6oz. I have 2 loving parents, 2 brothers, and 1 sister. I just couldn’t wait to meet all of them. I have had only the chance to listen to them for the last 36 weeks and I wanted to see them in person. So the day before I was born, my heart slowed down and that caused my mom to have to spend the night in the hospital. Durning the early morning hours my heartbeat slowed way down and stayed there for several minutes. The doctor said that was enough and that I had to come out NOW!..  Perfect, just what I wantedJ…. Well, what I didn’t realize was that my heart had not developed correctly which caused me to have to be rushed over to the intensive care unit immediately.  Apparently I have something called congenial heart failure. Big terms for my heart is sick. I spent two and a half weeks at the NICU in Green Bay and then had to take a wagon ride down the The Childrens Hospital in Milwaukee. The cardiologist tells my parents that I have a very unique heart disease and that although he has seen the multiple problems I have, he has rarely seen them all on one heart. Guess I am living up to the meaning of my name: Unique, strong girl. So, I have been at the Childrens hospital for a week now and they are telling me that I will need to have surgery within a week or two, because they really want me to gain some weight in order to make that more safe. I am kind of stubborn and not able to eat too much as it makes me very tired to do anything. That’s why you see all those tubes and IV’s on me. Those medicines and machines are all helping me to stay as calm and stress free as possible so I don’t have to burn too many calories. My heart has a hole between the Atrias(upper chambers), two very leaky valves between the upper and lower chambers on both the left and right sides, and the narrowing of my pulminary artery, causing it to work very very hard! This also causes me to not be able to breathe very good and that’s why I need a machine called a ventilator. I do have a great team of doctors and nurses looking after me, but that doesn’t stop my family from staying with me all the time. My dad keeps telling me that I am giving him too many gray hairs but I think he had them before I was born.. Mommy makes sure that I am always comfortable and kisses me all time, telling me that she can’t wait to hold me. As far as my brothers and sister, it has been great to finally see them even if I have only opened my eyes a couple of times. I am happy to have gotten to meet them. They keep asking when I will be coming home and as far as I can tell, I will be staying here for a couple more months because the doctors are telling my parents that it will take me 1-2 weeks before surgery, 2-3 weeks to recover just from the surgery, then another 4-5 weeks to learn all the things I would have learned by now had I not been sick. I am thankful for all the support  of grandma and both grandpas as I know it is hard for mom and dad to be gone from home and work for so long..  But I think my siblings don’t mind getting out of school sometimes to be able to come and see me!!  That’s what they told me anyway, but don’t tell my mom and dad!!