Legend started kindergarten this past September and is reading and writing. He has tons of friends, involved in sports, and is just the biggest miracle ever. We are so blessed by our Tiny Hero!

She tried to look at me with a reassuring look, but I knew something was very wrong. I said through tears in my eyes “just tell me.” She said she could not hear any breathing sounds on the left side of his body.

“When they first told me She had it, I had never heard of it and didn’t even knew how to pronounce it. This awfully horrid defect I’d never heard of quickly changed our world and became something I would need to live with each day.”

Even after all Aiden has been through he is still a bright, sweet, imaginative and inspirational little boy! We have talked to him numerous times regarding CDH and his surgery. He knows what his abdominal scar means and what Dr. Kays means to him. We are so blessed and thankful for every day with our Tiny Hero!

We went home with more questions than we had going to that appointment. In a short amount of time, we learned what we could about this life-threatening birth defect. We also learned that Pediatric Surgeon Dr. David Kays had one of the highest survival rates in the world for a congenital diaphragmatic hernia repair.

Griffin was born a fairly healthy baby on May 30, 2016. All he had was a small heart murmur and jaundice. After a few days in the hospital we went home and were ready for the world with our healthy son.

On 1-18-18 Braxton arrived and wow did we fully understand the importance of being with Dr. Kays. Braxton crashed on day 2 and went on ECMO. He had his CDH repair on day 3 and after 7 days of Ecmo he was off.

We were so excited to be expecting our first baby. Everything had been so perfect until a 30 minute ultrasound turned into an hour and half. I knew something was wrong, but all they would tell me was they couldn’t get the pictures they needed. Once we met with the doctor we learned he had a Diaphragmatic Hernia.

We get to the office and I was in shock. How could my baby be diagnosed with something so rare and so life threatening? Why was this happening to the baby we wanted for so long? No one could answer my questions at the time.

Tuanny is now a year old, already had his annual check up with Dr. Kays, and has done extremely well at home. He battled through a few colds and had a bad bout of stomach flu and an ER visit but reached some great milestones: rolled over at four months, crawled around between six and seven months, and has been scaling the walls and walking with assistance since eight months.

Dr. Kays spent 3 nights at her bedside doing everything possible to keep her off ECMO. He informed us that she was a lot sicker than we anticipated and was not improving much, so on day 4 he decided to do her repair surgery.

We truly believe Lucy Jane is our little miracle, and we know that God has used her and her story to share His love to a lot of people.

Jim Beau was on the ventilator for 13 days and on oxygen for about 30 days. Thankfully, Jim Beau was a model CDH patient. The nurses called him “the CDH baby who doesn’t know he is a CDH baby.”

At that moment, I did not care if my child was a boy or a girl; I didn’t care about my classroom; and I didn’t care how I was going to fit a baby into the mix. I was sad; I hurt, but I was going to fight. Julie did share with us we were having a boy, and Jon was so excited. His words were, “Yes! A football player.” My words, “I just want him to live.”

We were very excited but also nervous about the health of our baby. It wasn’t our focus, but strangely enough, it was always in the back of our mind.

There is no protocol, and there are no timelines during this whole process. It’s a lot of sitting, waiting and monitoring. As a mom who has her life "planned to a T," this was very hard from me to understand.

I remember turning to my husband and saying, "I hope nothing's wrong." Then, the doctor came in and greeted us. She was very sweet! She told us she was going to look at the picture then tell us what she was seeing.

We have such a strong family to have made it through all of this!! We are a military family and the triplets were born in Columbia, SC.

Grayson was born at 38 weeks with a left-sided CDH, operated on at a day old, and spent 30 days in the NICU. No ECMO. He came home without a feeding tube and the need for oxygen. He basically sailed through the process like a rock star!

He had decided on a name for him as well: Christian Peter, which means strong rock. He then handed me a picture of our son that was taken by a very nice volunteer with the March of Dimes. I clung on to this picture for the next 24 hours as I lay in my bed, unable to visit my sick baby boy.