Maddy

Child's Birth Year
2021

State/Province/Territory
Texas

NICU Hospital for my journey
Children’s Hospital of San Antonio

My NICU Graduate's Journey
Maddy was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and has spent more of her life in hospitals than most adults ever will. She has survived multiple open heart surgeries, cardiac arrest, heart failure, months inpatient at Texas Children’s Hospital, and ultimately a heart transplant at just three years old. Even after transplant, her journey has continued with rejection episodes, procedures, biopsies, infusions, and more follow-up appointments than I can count.

What makes you proud of your NICU graduate?
What makes me proud of her is not just that she survived, it’s how she survived. Maddy is endlessly brave in a way that doesn’t make sense for someone so small. She walks into clinic appointments carrying stuffed animals and asking for stickers while the adults around her are trying not to fall apart. She still dances, plays, laughs, bosses everyone around, and insists on being a normal little girl despite everything her body has put her through.

She has taught our family what resilience actually looks like. Not motivational quotes or dramatic speeches… just getting up again and again after impossible days.

Maddy’s story is complicated, painful, and ongoing, but she is here. And after everything, she is still full of personality, stubbornness, joy, and life. That is what makes us most proud.