Jaime C’s Essay

We were so excited to find out I was pregnant, we prayed for a name, and we were given the name Trinity.

It was on a Sunday that we brought our precious little girl home from the hospital with a clean bill of health. That next Tuesday we had our first pediatrician’s appointment. It was then that the doctor told us she had a very loud heart murmur, and she was scheduling us to see a pediatric cardiologist. Just three weeks later and after hours of testing, the pediatric cardiologist came into the room and told us that Trinity had been born with a very large hole in her heart called a Ventricular Septum Defect and would need open heart surgery by the time she was six months old to survive.

My mind shut down after he said these words, my brain simply could not process them. I felt like I was walking under water, I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying to me, and everything felt in slow motion. I called my mom and scared her because I just cried for the first few minutes and she was crying as well, she finally got me to speak to tell her what was going on.

The next five months were filled with visiting nurses and doctors’ appointments so they could monitor her for heart failure. During that time, I was hospitalized for a week having my gallbladder out and I sunk into depression. I was failing my little girl; I wasn’t there for her like I should have been, and I felt like the worst mother in the world. I came home to her finally and I felt she didn’t recognize me, and I burst into tears. I couldn’t nurse her for a week which made me feel even more like I had failed her, now more than ever she needed those nutrients.

Just days before we were leaving for heart surgery in Boston, I was driving on the highway when a VW Bug drove past me with a bumper sticker that said ‘Lil’ Love Bug’ and I thought to myself, that is my Trinity, she is my lil love bug. Just then I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me clearly saying, “I know she is your lil love bug and she will be okay.”

The weekend before heart surgery she started turning blue and I knew it was time. Her surgery went perfectly, and her heart was fixed but we soon discovered she had a leaking heart valve. We have all heard the phrase bleeding heart, this is a person who shows excessive sympathy for other’s and the very phrase comes from an image of Christ’s wounded heart which symbolizes His compassion and love for all people. I find it no coincidence that God told us to name her Trinity then gave her a bleeding heart to represent her namesake, the Holy Trinity. Today she is ten years old and truly loves with her whole bleeding heart.