Our daughter Liana was born with a congenital heart malformation called pulmonary atresia. She had her first open-heart surgery on December 3rd at 3 weeks old to place a shunt that allows blood to flow better from her heart to her lungs. The surgery was successful due to her amazing team at Vanderbilt in Nashville, but immediately afterward, Liana had a cardiac arrest. She was on life support for 3 weeks and spent 2 months in the NICU. As her parents, we stayed with her every possible second, putting the rest of our lives on hold to live in Nashville where our baby was.

After Liana recovered and was finally able to come home, she has thrived. She's done better than anyone ever expected, more than doubling her birth weight, meeting all her developmental milestones, and becoming a happy, social baby. She's amazing and we adore her, as do our family members and friends.

Now Liana is close to a second open-heart surgery, scheduled for May 22nd, just after she turns 6 months old. As her parents, all we want is to be by her side through all of this. She's already overcome so much in her short life, but she's still so small. She needs her Mama to hold her when things hurt and her Daddy to make her laugh when she's scared. And we need to be there with her, by her side for this scary and painful time of her life. Thank goodness that this surgery is our "finish line" for a long while; Liana won't need another surgery until she's 6-8 years old. She'll have the chance to be a normal, healthy kid! And hopefully, cardiac medicine will continue to advance and the next surgery will look totally different.

Unfortunately, being with Lia when she needs us puts everything else on hold. We need money to cover housing/food in Nashville and to continue to pay our normal bills at home, as well as care for our pets while we're away. We hate asking for help, but this is a big financial issue that we can't solve on our own.

Any assistance with this will be really, really deeply appreciated. Every donation or even just a like/share would mean so much to us and our family. We're just trying to do the best we can to be there for our little girl during this rough part of her life (and ours!).