Hi everyone! As many know, Brady Farrar and Delaney Carr had a beautiful baby girl, Ellia Rae, on October 23, sharing a birthday with her Daddy. What many of you don’t know is that she was born at 36 weeks and 6 days but stopped growing at 33 weeks gestation. She was born via emergency C-section due to Delaney having gestational hypertension and the baby having a high heart rate and not moving as the doctors would like. After she was born, she was immediately brought to the NICU due to breathing issues and was diagnosed with Ventricular Septal Defect, which is a hole in her heart, as well as Atrial Septal Defect, which is a hole in the wall that separates the two upper chambers of the heart, causing a heart murmur. In many cases, children are perfectly fine with these defects and the holes close on their own, but in Ellia’s case, it has caused her some further problems such as a high heart rate, struggling to feed and gain weight, extra fluid on her lungs and in her body, and worst of all, infections that she is working so hard to fight off.

After doing another ECHO, we learned it is best for her to have heart surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. We anticipate that she will be going this coming week and surgery will be immediate along with an approximate month-long stay to follow. All of the hospital housing accommodations for families are full, so Brady, Delaney, and their mothers will need to find further housing such as Airbnbs or hotels. They understand with the holidays coming up, this can be a hard time for people to donate anything, but if you can spare even a dollar or 5, they will be beyond grateful! If you prefer to donate through Venmo, Delaney’s Venmo is Delaney-Carr-0.