Featured Cherub of the Week is Sofia Marie Carman, she is the daughter of Steve and Katie Carman.
From the description of her video on YouTube her mom wrote, “Sofia was born with a 10% chance of living. We knew she was a CDH baby after they saw her deformity in her ultrasound photos. She weighed 3lbs 5.6 oz at birth. The doctors kept telling us not to expect her to live because she was so bad off there was no chance. She spent 3 months fed by IV fluids only until she weighed 4lbs which was the requirement for her CDH repair surgery. Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia meant that she had a hole in her diaphragm. All of her stomach contents were in her chest and would have suffocated her from within if she had been fed prior to her surgery to put everything back in place and held down with a patch on her diaphragm. Her surgeon told us that after her had seen how mangled her insides were, there was no reason medically that she should be alive. He told us that prayers and God were the reasons she was still on Earth with us. After that surgery she had a metal clip placed in her heart to close a valve. She had two eye surgeries to stop the overgrowth of blood vessels from the oxygen she required. Her patch broke around 5 months old because she had grown so fast after they began to tube feed her. It was surgically repaired. After spending a total of 7 months in the NICU she was released to go home on oxygen. She had her gallbladder removed when she was 2 years old because she had a gallstone from the prolonged usage of the hyperal while she was IV fed only. She is currently doing well at this time and is very brilliant, talented, and strong willed.”
This video is of Sofia from birth to age 4. She is currently 11 years and is a talented, beautiful, intelligent and strong willed girl and we have enjoyed watching her grow up over the years. We sure hope Sofia keeps following her dreams!
