We are walking again in honor of Silas at the Cincinnati Congenital Heart Walk.  It was such a memorable time last year and a neat experience for our whole family.  It is one of the ways we can honor him and help raise funds and awareness for congenital heart defects.  There are many ways to help us do this.  You can donate, come walk with us, purchase a strongsilas t-shirt, or all of the above.  I will be posting the t-shirts soon.  We will be wearing them in the walk.  My cousin has done an awesome job creating these shirts.  She has graciously committed to donating ten dollars from every shirt purchased to the heart walk.  I can’t thank her enough for doing this for our family.  Below is the link to donate or join our team!

http://events.congenitalheartwalk.org/site/TR/Walk/General?team_id=13514&pg=team&fr_id=1730

God has been good to our family.  I will forever be changed by my little boy, Silas.

Little did I know, a year ago, that February was Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Month.  I always thought it was about the commercial holiday-Valentines Day.  I will never look at this month the same again.

I don’t believe I have shared this on my blog, but a dear friend of mine who has been there for all the ups and downs of Silas’ journey donated her wedding dress in honor of him to an organization called Tayllor’s Angel Gowns.  They are an organization who take donated wedding dresses, bridal gowns, and any formal dresses and turn them into gowns, hats, and booties for children who are ill or who have passed away.  They donate to the Kentucky and Cincinnati area hospitals.  I received something similar to this when I delivered Silas and that keepsake is something I will always cherish.  She continues to bless me with finding ways to remember him and to show me she cares.  Thank you so much dear friend! For the month of February I am going to collect as many dresses as possible to donate to Tayllor’s Angel Gowns to help as many families as possible who have to deal with the loss of their little one.  If you have any dresses you would like to donate please contact me.  Also, you can read all about their organization on Facebook.

Today was a great way to start off heart Month.  A day we have been waiting for since we found out we were expecting again after Silas.  Words can not describe the relief we felt after this anatomy scan and fetal echo! Baby boy Gentry has a four chamber heart and totally healthy all the way down to five perfect toes on each foot❤.  God even provided a caring ultrasound tech who explained every detail to ease our minds and a very thorough specialist who will scan his heart every four weeks as it continues to grow, which gives me such peace. We feel we can finally dream about his future and be excited with what God has in store for him and our life with him.

In the CHD community the question is asked everyday “How many of you have gone on to have a heart healthy child after your child with a CHD?”  We have so many fears of reliving this again.  I am here to give hope that it can and does happen.  Here is my heart healthy rainbow baby.

 

 

This is a video showing how we spent the day remembering our Silas (Ocho) Willaim Lee Gentry’s first year being in Heaven.

Silas I know you are having a glorious time with your grandma and aunts in heaven on this one year angelversary. I am trying to rejoice with you as I know you are whole and happy with our Heavenly Father, but I miss you greatly.

God saw you were getting tired, a cure was not meant to be, so He put His arms around you and whispered, “Come on home with me.”
With tearful eyes, I watched and saw you fade away. Although I loved you dearly, I could not make you stay. A golden heart stopped beating, your tender hands at rest. God took you home to prove to us, He indeed really only takes the best. Everyday I pray, could you come back and stay awhile, I want to hear your voice and see your smile. I want to hold you tight and never let go, and tell you just how much I love you so!

We were having church at our home yesterday and I looked out on silas’ tree and for the first time since we got the tree(last April) I saw a big red cardinal perched right on the top. We have them flying all around our trees on the other side of our property, but never on his tree. We have been waiting and wanting to see one in his garden. Today God gave me that sweet gift. I was so taken back.

On this day a year ago we were flying to Philadelphia with the acceptance of Silas’ broken heart, with feelings of relief knowing we were going to one of the best hospitals to treat his condition.  I remember feeling joy on the airplane as Boyd and I went over all the heart diagrams (to make sure we had the anatomy and function down to discuss all the complex issues with some of the best drs.), discussing the apartment we were about to rent that we would live in for the next year.  It was a joy of knowing we had made this decision to move far away from home to give Silas the best care.  That it was going to be so hard, but God would see us through it all-and He did!

I look back on that day and it kind of makes me sad that I had such false hope.  At the worst we thought he would need a heart transplant.  I really did not think they would tell me he was already in heart failure and there was nothing that could be done.  I remember thinking “How is that possible, you guys are the best.  That is why we came here!” I know I could not have foreseen what lie ahead, and that God still gave me joy amongst our circumstances.  Maybe I am just angry that it did not turn out how I thought or wanted.

It does not feel like it has been a year.  Time has gone by so fast.  It still feels so fresh when I look back on all the details of his little life.  January 14th-the day he passed and January 15th-the day he was born will be some tough days.  Plans have been in the making of what we wanted to do to celebrate his life and the day he was birthed into this world. It will be a day spent with our children remembering Silas William Lee Gentry.  We have some fun activities planned with the kids and some tough ones planned.  I have not opened his memory boxes that hold all his memories from the hospital and things we had purchased before we knew he would pass away.  Boyd and I know it will be heartbreaking, but I don’t want to forget him.  I break down crying everytime I think about doing it and seeing his blanket he laid in while I held him.

Throughout this year God has lifted me up so many times.  When I start going down that spiraling path of sadness and anger He is always there to pull me out.  He has been so patient with me as I am not perfect and have not always accepted Silas’ death.  I have a different understanding now of the sacrifice of God’s only Son.  How Jesus willingly died for me and you.  What a huge sacrifice it was!

This song is not one that builds me up or gives me strength, but the words are exactly how it feels and what you think when having lost a little one too soon.

My last post I mentioned we had bought a few things for Silas’ grave. I wanted to share a few pictures. I had mentioned before I associate cardinals with Silas due to at his funeral a vibrant, beautiful red cardinal flew over his grave as I was trying to make myself leave. The first few weeks after he died a cardinal would sit in a tree right by our dining room window while we ate dinner together.  Ever since then we have had cardinals show up at just the right times, particularly at family outings we take when I wish he was there to enjoy it with us. God sends that reminder that Silas is always with us. We also added some dwarf Christmas trees that holds a guardian angel ornament.

As we were hanging up his cardinal the old song “I’ll fly away” kept playing in my head. We sang it the next day at church.

Today the awaited call finally came. I am overjoyed to say that all the genetic testing came back normal!   At 20 weeks I will get a fetal echo to double check the babies heart for any issues.

When I received the call Boyd was gone.  As I got the news my body felt limp. Then when she told me the gender I began to cry. I had know idea how much that would affect me.  We are having a little boy❤️.  Not too long after I hung up Boyd came home.  Once again I began sobbing when I told him the news. Before Silas we had three girls in a row. Having another little boy makes me soooo happy, but I also had  an emotion I can’t label knowing it was another little boy.  I guess that emotion of knowing I have a little boy I won’t see grow up. We held each other tightly for awhile feeling the relief of receiving such good news. Feeling God’s arms around us. Resting in Knowing that this little blessing is healthy. Knowing I WILL see you again Silas💕

Here are some fun pics we took while sharing the news with the kids. 

Sine we became pregnant with our new little one at almost the one year mark of getting pregnant with Silas, all the milestones are coinciding at the same time. It makes for a lot of mixed emotions.   

This Friday we will have the nuchal translucency screening on the new baby. It will be one year that at the same test we found out that Silas had something extremely wrong with his heart and possibly some form of trisomy. In the CHD community the questions and worries that come up a lot are “will my next child be heart healthy?”  As the time approaches I find myself getting very anxious to make it past this point. Praying our little one will be healthy. I catch myself reliving over and over that day that was suppose to be a happy day-getting to see our growing child, turn into something so overwhelming and lasting hours as we discuss what all the testing meant and where we go from that point. I can remember every tiny detail.  I can still feel the raw emotion of the expected diagnosis and the uncertainty of the prognosis.   It will be hard walking into those same doors, hallways, elevators, and offices of the specialist that we visited several times until I delivered Silas. I don’t mean to sound so depressed and hopeless as I am also filled with joy and excitement at seeing our newest blessing. I just want to be real. This is what is going on and it is ok!  Between now and January 15th there will be several other  one year marks that I am sad to see approaching, but behind that sadness God has brought joy right along with it, my gift from God, new life.  

We recently purchased a beautiful leaded stain glass cardinal to hang at his grave. I will post pictures once it is up.  We also bought his ornament for our Christmas tree. It is a tradition that each of our children get a first Christmas ornament that marks their life. Of course our stockings that will be hung would not be complete without one for Silas. His came in the mail yesterday with his name stitched onto it(for the life of me I can’t remember what that is called). Etsy has been my friend lately:)

Last week would make one year since we first found out that God was going to bless us with Silas.  When I think back to a year ago we were filled with such excitement as we always are when we find out that we are expecting another baby.  Who would have ever thought our family would have gone down this path of losing a child.  I sure didn’t.

This journey has brought out some ugliness in us-to be expected, but overall we have grown a lot in our faith and trust in God.  It has made us more aware that life is to short to wait for tomorrow.  Five years ago we felt that God had called our family to give over our control as to the size of our family.  Psalm 127:3-Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward.  It doesn’t say Behold only a certain amount of children are a blessing.  We had to  get past the stigmas society have put on us that a large family either means that a child is deprived, not taken care of, or there is not enough love to give each child.  Of course I do realize this can be the case in some situations.  For those reading this who do not know me, I want to explain that we hold no judgement to others who have only decided to have one child, two, or no children.  That is your own personal journey with the Lord ,or if not a believer a personal decision .  We actually were done at two, ha!  So I write this not to convince everyone that a large family is the only way to go, but to explain the never ending question of “Are you done now?” And it will help further explain the next part.

Being a parent is exhausting whether it is one child or ten, but I don’t think I have met one parent after having a child wish they never had them.  Parenting is plain out hard, but so rewarding.  From a Christian perspective it is my mission field that God has called me to.  What better place to reach the souls of an unbeliever and to raise them up to be women and men of God.  Also, I just love them.  They are a part of me.  When we lost Silas I never wanted to be pregnant again.  I was angry and told God “I made this hard decision to give control over to you and you give me a child only to take him away!  How mean and unloving!”  In my heart I knew that was not the case, I was just angry, and sad.  I knew God had a purpose in all this and that following Christ does not mean that everything will just be perfect.  Life is full of ups and downs including death.  As time has passed we have healed emotionally and spiritually.  We began praying that God would bless us with at least one more child.  I am about to be 41 and did not know how much time I had left to conceive.  I am an old mamma:)  I still ache for Silas to be with me.  I still think of him a dozen times a day.  I still have moments when I will cry over the loss of him.  I did not want my last child to be one that was lost in such a tragic way.

Just days after the one year mark of finding out about Silas, we found out we were expecting again, number 9!  We are so thankful and excited at this news.  We are overwhelmed by His love and mercy.  I admit I have some fear this heart condition will happen again-5% chance, but I have to put all my trust in Him.

All my HLHS and CHD families that read my blog, I continue to pray for your little ones and your families.  Let God guide you through your own journey of CHDs.

I have people from many countries who read this blog.  I would love to hear from you and listen to your story.

 

Seven months have passed since I last felt my little Silas kick.  Time seems to go so fast, yet at the same time stand still.  It is hard to believe that it has been almost a year that I found out we were going to be blessed with him.  It sounds so cliche, but truly not a day goes by where I don’t think about him, dream about the what ifs…, and talk to him.  God has helped me let go of a lot of the pain, but my heart still aches for him and always will.

His garden is complete!!!  It turned out more beautiful than I ever imagined.  We love to go back to the garden daily and enjoy seeing all the changes. Different flowers bloom and sooo many butterflies flitter about.  At any given time there can be over a dozen butterflies  flying from bush to bush.  We decided to do a yearly family photo gathered around Silas’ bench so he can be included.  Each year we plan to participate in a local heart walk and design a new shirt.  We thought it would be cool to wear those shirts each year in our family photo in his garden.  So here is 2016 pic!

 

His bench has his tree engraved on the right side, beside his name (we are covering it in this picture).  Under his name is the verse Psalm 139-For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

On my tough days I just remind myself that death is only temporary when you believe in God.

 

Today or sometime around this date we were expecting to hold our precious little boy.  I found it quite ironic that on his due date his headstone was delivered.  This chapter of our journey with Silas is finished.  Ever since we found out about him we have been planning.  First it was all the planning of adding another little one into our family.  Like, where will he sleep, adding on a new addition to our home, his name, and everything else that goes along with having a newborn.  Then when we received his diagnosis of HLHS the planning switched to how are we going to care for a child with a possible terminal diagnosis-being heartbroken, which doctors would take care of him, moving out of state, and all that goes along with this terrifying diagnosis.  Next, the planning of his death.  All the decisions of his burial.  Lastly, the planning of how we will remember him and  keeping his memory alive.  Now that all of that is done I am left with all the feelings of him being gone.  No more planning.  Although we will continue to be active in spreading awareness and helping however we can with congenital heart defects.  Also we will always look for ways to celebrate his life that God created.  We look forward to the next chapter with him.

Thank you again for all our family and friends who have prayed us through this time.  For always listening to me repeat over and over my sadness and frustrations.  For supporting my blog and encouraging me to keep on writing, that it matters and touches others in many ways.

This is a video Boyd and I put together to remember him and all that we have gone through with him.  It is kind of long, but special to us, especially the song that plays along.

 

For the last two months we have been planning for the heart walk in Indianapolis. Several family and friends participated in the weekend with us. We had strongsilas.com shirts made for us all to wear and we were able to raise 800.00 for congenital heart defect research. 

We spent Friday at a beautiful park just spending time as a family. We even got treats from the ice cream truck (we live in the country so our children never get that experience). They thought that was really cool. They even ate one for silas🙂

That evening,back at our hotel, we met up with some of our best friends the fillas. We enjoyed dinner and swimming. My younger ones kept saying it was the best time of their lives. I was happy they could have a fun time in memory of their little brother. 

Today we were up early to enjoy the heart walk.  It was raining in the early morning and I was nervous about how we would handle the rain with little ones. As soon as we got there the rain had stopped and the sun came out. Could not have been more perfect.  They had a great turn out and were able to raise 55,500. The mile walk was through the beautiful Butler University. I was not prepared for the jealousy I would feel seeing some of the parents with their heart warriors. By no means do I think they have had the easy way either. I broke down a few times wishing my circumstances were different for this walk. But at the same time I found myself smiling at them and sharing that look of “I understand you”.  The kids enjoyed every minute of it. They felt as if it was a big celebration. Which is exactly what we wanted, to celebrate his life. 

After the walk we went out for lunch. The waitress asked about our shirts. After explaining to her what they meant she started to tear up. She told us she lost her 5 mo. 20 years ago and wanted her top to go towards strongsilas.com. I thought it was very sweet of her. 

We plan to do this yearly to shed light on CHD’s and to remember Silas. I want my children to always remember their little brother and at the same time to help others.

 This Thursday his headstone will be placed, which ironically Is my due date. It has felt like this chapter was never closed due to waiting for his gravesite to be complete. I guess I never understood all the emotions of death and importance of the burial until now. I know he is in heaven and not at the grave, but it gives me peace knowing he still has a place here on earth.   

I miss him so much and would have done anything to fight for him to stay here with me, but I am also glad he is not suffering. But in fact rejoicing with Jesus and his whole heart.  One day we will see you again my little boy. You will forever be in my heart💕

Psalm 139

1 You have searched me, Lord,

    and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue

    you, Lord, know it completely.

5 You hem me in behind and before,

    and you lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

    too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?

    Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

    if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,

    your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

    and the light become night around me,”

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;

    the night will shine like the day,

    for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,

    they would outnumber the grains of sand—

    when I awake, I am still with you.

19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!

    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!

20 They speak of you with evil intent;

    your adversaries misuse your name.

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,

    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

22 I have nothing but hatred for them;

    I count them my enemies.

23 Search me, God, and know my heart;

    test me and know my anxious thoughts.

24 See if there is any offensive way in me,

    and lead me in the way everlasting.