Guest Blogger: Carissa of The Green Eyed Lady Blog

So just go ahead and grab the kleenex now, especially if you’re a mom.  My friend, Carissa from The Green Eyed Lady Blog is a blessing.  I met Carissa through her beautiful daughter, Emma.  I was trolling through blogs and Instagram and saw the most darling baby!  I stalked and found Carissa.  Carissa is a woman of faith and I admire her in every way.  This is Carissa’s story.

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When I saw Leslie’s post in the BLMgirls Facebook group about needing some guest bloggers, I looked at it and looked away. When I left and came back to the group it was starring me in the face! lol So I told her I would love to do it but I was nervous. I mean I am a blogger, but to go on someone else’s blog was a little scary. Well, we exchanged a few emails, and finally she suggested that I blog about Emma.

Hey I can do it. That’s easy enough, she’s my daughter!! So I told myself to just start writing. Well. Not as easy as I thought it would be. But I did it!

So here is my story…

When I was 20 weeks pregnant, I had an ultrasound and we found out we were having a little girl! Darrick (my husband) and I were ecstatic! We were hoping for a boy but that all went out the window once we found out we were having Emma Renee (named after her grandmothers). We already had girl names for “just in case” purposes! We left the doctors on Cloud 9. A couple of days later, I got a phone call from the doctors saying they wanted me to go to another hospital for a Level 2 Ultrasound because they thought the baby may have a cleft lip. My World Sank. I sobbed and sobbed and felt that I had failed at being a mom already! We made an appointment for the next day, and it was confirmed she had a Cleft Lip and possibly a Cleft Palate. I cried my eyes out…in fear, in guilt, and just because it was all foreign to me and as a mom to be it was not what I wanted, or expected to hear.  I went through so many emotions…I went through a period of not wanting to tell anyone outside of family, wondering what people would say when they saw my child, how could this happen to me, why did this happen to me, is something wrong with me, why isn’t my child going to be perfect…

Eventually I was able to take it all to God and give it to Him! “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” Psalms 55:22

Throughout all of this I continued to pray to get these feelings off of me because I knew it couldnt be good for the baby to feel this way! So I kept praying because after all, it was all I could do. Throughout my prayers, God spoke to me and told me that Emma would be my Miracle Child!

Well she was born…and SHE’S PERFECT!

We had a few bumps in the road after birth because she was in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) for the first 50 days of her life due to eating and other problems…

I still dressed her on a daily basis because I knew we were coming home from that hospital one day…

Two weeks after being released from the hospital, her first professional pictures! (above)

Before Surgery and After Surgery…(Instagram Photo)

After survery frst chicken bone

Playing in her Grandmother’s hat.

Her “Thank you, Jeses!” pose.

I could have added a million pictures of my munchkin! I added so many for a reason…I wanted to show you how GOOD MY GOD is! My baby was born with a Cleft Lip and Palate, but God still gave her the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!! She is always smiling! She was smiling the day she was born! She even smiles in her sleep! I dare you hand everything over to Him…HE WILL SHOW UP AND SHOW OUT each and every time!

 Words just can’t express our gratefulness when it comes to our daughter! She is one of the strongest people I know, and to be so little! She has had her first lip surgery and she bounced back, we have surgery coming up for her palate repair in January or February…and eventually some reconstructive surgery for her nose. But through all of that she is the perfect little girl and I can’t THANK GOD enough for giving her to us!!!