It had been a hectic evening flying solo with the girls. David was out of town for work in Vail for the night and I was rushing to feed both girls and get them bathed and ready for bed. Hattie had been pretty fussy all evening — she has nights like this from time to time.

Shiloh, Hattie, and I were laying in Hattie’s bed reading one of their favorite books - “This Old Man” (a sound book from the 90’s when I was a little girl). I was trying hard to be extra animated to try and get Hattie to calm down. Then all of the sudden she stopped crying. I looked over and she had gone limp into one of her scary seizures.

I immediately scooped her out of her bed and ran into the living room. We had just been prescribed a NEW emergency med. My brain was a little fogged… trying to remember each step, and exactly what the dose was, in case I had to administer them. Usually David is here to talk me through things.. but this time I was alone.

“Hattie… Hattttie..it’s okay baby. Mommy’s right here.”

I was walking around the house with her little body in my arms, just waiting for a glimpse of a cry or a smile to let me know that she had stopped seizing. I checked her temperature and it was a little high (fever is always a trigger for a seizure). I fumbled through empty bottles of Tylenol and ibuprofen, trying to find the right syringes and a clean piggy tail to give it to her through her g-tube.

Finally, a little cry, and a big cheesy Hattie smile. She was like, “Hey, mom, what’d I miss?!” Thank goodness I didn’t have to give the emergency meds. Only a few minutes had gone by but it seemed like an eternity. I sat there on the couch, cuddling my little Hattie, thanking God that it wasn’t a long seizure. All of a sudden my heart stopped. “Oh no, I had forgotten about Shiloh”. I ran back into Hattie’s room, expecting something awful since it was SO quiet in our house.

I turned the corner and see little Shiloh sitting up in Hattie’s bed, reading “This Old Man”.

I’m not going to lie, I got pretty emotional and had some major “mom guilt” after this. How could I just leave her? She’s only 14 months old, and I just left her alone!

But then I stopped. God made Shiloh our daughter and Hattie’s sister. He built her with a little extra strength, independence, and some extra spunk. He made her STRONG.

Tagging along to appointments and therapy sessions, listening to the crying and crazy noises around our house sometimes and seeing her Mommy and Daddy react during emergency situations with her big sister. I’m just so proud of her, and so thankful Hattie has her little sister, Shiloh, in her life.

-Abby