Happy Birthday Benny!

My sweet Bennett is 2 years old today! 

I think about the journey he has been on in his short life and am just amazed and what he has become! When I first started Life With The Stevens, I used it as my outlet for my emotions of dealing with the news of finding out my baby would be born with a birth defect that would require surgery right after birth. I'm thankful in this day and age of technology that we were able to find out and prepare ourselves, but then again, I think about how I just stressed and worried the last 19 weeks of my pregnancy and didn't get to enjoy it like I had hoped.

 He was born with an Omphalocele, which can be small or Giant, depending on the case-it's basically where the organs remain and grow in the cord and do not go inside the body. Bennett's case was a small one, thankfully, and his Omphalocele was repaired with one surgery 3 days after he was born. And with an Omphalocele comes several potential developmental disorders, but we are thankful that he has none of them! The only other "issue" he has is a hearing loss in one ear. But you'd never know it!

I have to say, those 8 days in the NICU were some of the hardest days of my life. But also, I learned to be thankful for my healthy boy, that his defect was repairable. The NICU is such a heartwrenching place to be, to be surrounded by babies born too early, or babies who are really sick. NICU parents rally around each other though, and I couldn't have made it through those early days without them, and my friends and family.
So here we are, two years later! A happy family of 4, enjoying life one day at a time!
Happy Birthday Bennett, we can't imagine life with you! Mom, Dad, and Big Brother Cooper love you so much!

Benny at birth, my 9 lb 4 oz miracle!

My dancing birthday boy two years later <3