As many of you know, Jacob and I found out that we were expecting our 3rd bundle of joy. At our 20-week ultrasound, we unfortunately found out that our baby has a congenital heart defect called Pulmonary Atresia with intact Ventricular Septum.

This rare, life-threatening heart disease causes the pulmonary valve to be completely closed off, leaving the right ventricle to be underdeveloped with no proper blood flow to the lungs. This news crushed our family. We were also told that I would have to deliver as early as 23 weeks because she was under distress. I was then asked if I wanted to terminate my child… that was a big fat NO.

At this point Jake and I hadn’t named our baby. We decided that was something we’d do at birth. Due to this unexpected heart disease diagnosis, we decided it would be best to name her. We thought long and hard and the only name that made sense to us both was “Faith”. Having Faith was something we needed to hold onto, to know that God is the only one in control.

Fast forward to March 5, 12:04 am 2025… Faith Hastings was born. Within 4 minutes I might add! Weighing 8lbs and a real beauty. 5 days later she had her first procedure, that was to ballon her pulmonary valve open and it was a success. The next step is closing her PDA and trialing her off of prostin. Unfortunately Faith caught Coronavirus and that has set things back… her oxygen levels continued to dip, basic interventions were no longer working. The doctors thought it was best that they put in a breathing tube. Another setback, but Faith needed additional support. The breathing tube amongst other things seemed to be helping her while the coronavirus runs its course.. a few days later Faiths heart rate dropped severely, causing the doctors to perform chest compressions on her.. this helped bring her heart rate back up. It unfortunately happened again around 4am the next day.

After running many test they also found out that Faith has another infection within her blood. They started her on antibiotics immediately. Hit after hit, after hit, our family is absolutely exhausted. This is by far the hardest thing we’ve ever had to go through… seeing our 3 week old baby girl with a heart disease struggling with coronavirus, and now an infection in her blood and needing to be intubated is one of the hardest things to witness.

Where we are currently is, Akron Children’s Hospital and Cincinnati Children’s hospital have been working together on the best course of action for Faith.

Unfortunately things aren’t going as well as we had hoped for. Faith is a fighter and we do believe that God will pull her through this. This is most definitely a marathon and not a sprint. With that being said, there is absolutely no way I will be going back to work anytime soon.

As of now Faith is still intubated and sedated to keep her still and calm. There is no set date for her to be discharged.. and no set date for me to return back to work as of now.

It’s really a sad thing when your baby hasn’t been discharged yet but the hospital bills begin to pile up.

At this point, absolutely anything helps. We are starting this in hopes of making the financial burden a little lighter as we navigate these new unforeseen circumstances.

We are also asking, above else, for everyone to pray for us. We know that God is a miracle-working God! We know that He has knitted Faith together in my womb and we believe He will completely heal baby Faith. So please join us in praying and believing for a miracle!

Contact myself, Jacob or Trisha if you’d like to make a donation another way. Thank you.