Please Vote Today - This is your daily vote reminder to help babies born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia!
CHERUBS is participating the Vivint Gives Back Contest on Facebook and we need your votes! How to vote:
3. Log in through Facebook and Vote!
4. Repeat #2 and #3 daily through August 27, 2011
Contest Update - Today is the last day of the Vivint donation matching! We're over halfway to the $2500 in donations needed. Vivint will match up to $2500, raising $5000 for CDH.
Contest Voter Tip Of The Day - Post on friend's Facebook walls, send them messages, ask them to vote in chat. 99% of Facebook friends do not read all of your status updates so most will not see that you are asking for votes. It's important to ask directly.
More Contest Info - visit http://www.voteforcherubs.org/ for information on how you can win prizes in our voter raffle, the contest video, free graphics, learn where the money would go to help CDH babies and more.
Did You Know? - A baby is born with CDH every 10 minutes in the world. That means that 3 babies die from CDH every hour.
Meet Our Cherubs! - Gabriel Schuyler Leight
It is often said that the birth days of your children are the happiest days of your life. On December 2, 2009, we joyfully welcomed our second son, Gabriel Schuyler, into the world. He was perfect--all 8 pounds and 5 ounces of him. He eagerly began eating and looking at the world around him, and his daddy and I spoke of introducing him to his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and especially his big brother. Gabes spent his first day meeting his family, napping and eating. At 10 o'clock, daddy and I dutifully wheeled Gabriel back to the newborn nursery. Daddy went home to be with the newly minted big brother, while I went to bed, knowing that Gabes would be back in a few hours to nurse again. At 12:30 AM, I got the phone call that would forever change our lives.
It was the neonatologist in the NICU. My new son was very sick and I needed to come down immediately. The doctor met me at the entrance to the NICU and began asking a host of questions: did I have any prenatal care? (of course!) were there any ultrasounds done? (yes) did I do drugs while pregnant? (absolutely not) None of these questions made sense. My beautiful new son was perfect when I last saw him...and then she took me to his bedside. It was almost as though someone had punched me in the gut. There is nothing that can ever prepare a parent for seeing their child hooked up to life support machines. Gabriel was intubated, had tubes running down his nose into his stomach, had a central line in his armpit, blood pressure, oxygen and heart monitors plastered to his delicate skin and the nurses were prepping him for an umbilical catheter. The doctor explained to me that he had a birth defect called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia and that some of his abdominal organs were in his chest. He would need to have surgery. I asked her to write down the name of the defect because I had never heard of it, and to please call my husband so that he could be with me.
Gabriel had surgery at 48 hours old. His large and small intestine and spleen were in his chest, sitting on top of his left lung. His surgeon hypothesizes that his spleen was in the hernia acting like a cork, which allowed his lungs to develop fully, and that the organs herniated through after he was born, when he began eating and breathing. During the surgery, his collapsed lung re-inflated on its own, and his heart shifted back to its proper place. Eleven days after his operation, his pulled out his respirator, and hasn't looked back since. Gabriel came home with us 20 days after he was born, two days before Christmas.
Gabes is now a very healthy, active, playful and noisy 19-month-old. His scar is the only indication that he was ever sick--that he could have become an angel. Gabriel is why we vote. His daddy and I are only too aware of how lucky we are. We hate CDH. We hate that it takes beautiful babies from their families. We hope that one day CDH will be a thing of the past, and until then, that all families can be as lucky as ours.
Written by Gabes's momma, Alexandra Leight
Thank you all for your support and your votes to help CDH babies!
Feel free to forward this to family and friends!
Submit your cherub to be featured by e-mailing his/her name, photo, date(s) and a short paragraph to membership@cdhsupport.org. By submitting, you give CHERUBS permission to use this data on our site, blogs, newsletters, videos, etc to raise CDH Awareness.
CHERUBS - The Association of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Research, Awareness and Support
Public 501(c)III non-profit organization serving over 3000 CDH families in 38 countries. Searching for the cause, prevention and best treatments of CDH since 1995.
http://www.cdhsupport.org/
http://www.cdhresearch.org/
http://cdhsupport.blogspot.com/
http://www.cdhconference.org/
Phone - 919-610-0129 E-mail - info@cdhsupport.org
Mailing Address - 3650 Rogers Rd #290, Wake Forest, NC 27587, USA
