Featured cherub of the week is Christin Swafford, daughter of Korey and Alicia Swafford. Alicia had this to share about her daughter, “On April 11th, 2018, we found out that day my daughter had CDH, it was the day after we found a family member had committed suicide. The Dr. asked us that day if we had anything else going wrong in our life and we told him what had happened. He was upset to tell us we would have to be going to a specialist because she had a Left Diaphragmatic Hernia, he has not seen it in 20 years. We ended up at Saint Vincent Women’s hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana and my doctor was Dr. Sumners. We got a amniocentesis to test to make sure she had nothing else genetically wrong with her and after weeks and weeks all of her test results came back perfect. Next step was the mri to see what her lung volume was and Dr. Evan Kokoska said if it was lower than 30% there was a chance she would not make it. So after spending 2 whole hours laying there we got it done and went home. Knowing my child was diagnosed with CDH was the worst feeling in the world. I had completely stopped buying anything for her and just cried every single day. So a couple weeks go by after the mri and our little girls lung volume was 45%! We had so much hope hope with her, things started to get better for us, we did a tour around the NICU and there is nothing scarier than them telling you what was going to happen. On October 8th, 2018, at 10:45 am by c-section, Christin Hailey Grace Swafford was born weighing 9 pounds 11 ounces. It took 2 hours until I could see her. After being intubated, she was having amazing nights, on the 4-5th day she had her repair. Her hernia was the size of a silver dollar, it was all stomach and bowel in her chest with hardly any bleeding, her surgeon was so amazed! Being there beside her felt like years but she was such an awesome baby, it’s like she had it all planned out on how she was going to fight this. She spent 2 months in the NICU and she was such a fighter!”
