"What we share together will live much longer than we do..."

Happy Thanksgiving!  We spent the day and ate our turkey at the hospital. Bentley is doing great and recovering quick. His heart still needs a little longer on the dopamine so we are still in the ICU. We will do another echo in the morning to see how it’s doing. But he’s doing great! We have so much to be grateful for today and everyday. We are missing Hadley but we are grateful that she too can be around family enjoying the Holiday with her cousins. Thanks for all the prayers and love. We are hoping to be home this weekend but don’t know for sure. We are just taking it day by day♥️ Happy Thanksgiving ♥️The Richards Family

Before I was able to update the blog about Bentley’s surgery it got moved up! Surgery was scheduled for November 28. Then on Wednesday of last week the surgeons office called and said they would need to move his surgery later date. However that had a last minute opening on Friday and asked if that would be enough time. We have already been waiting for a couple months so we said we could do Friday!  So here I am writing this on my phone from the hospital. 🙂 Let me back up a little bit. The week of November 3 Bentley had a series of tests and procedures to see if he would be a candidate for the double switch surgery. My awesome mother in law came out and took care of Hadley while we were in and out of the hospital that week.  He ended up not being a candidate yet, the pressure in his artery still needed to be a little higher before they would consider him a candidate,  so we proceeded with our previous plan of just tightening his PA Band.  When we found out our surgery was moved

After two long months, the time has finally arrived for Bentley's Testing! Tomorrow is Pre-op. Tuesday-Wednesday is his cardiac cath procedure and on Thursday is his CT scan.  We are hoping by the end of this week we have some answers, and have and a surgery date set. We are also so glad that Alex's mom can be here this week to take care of Hadley while we are in and out of the hospital. 🧡 We are grateful for all of the prayers in Bentleys behalf, and are grateful for any more as he goes through his testing this week. Anyway its short today, but I will post an update once we know more. Lots of Love Lezlie and Alex Also we did celebrate Halloween! Even though we have been keeping inside away from germs we still carved pumpkins and put on costumes. We even went up and down our street so the kids got some candy:)  We had an ewok and a spooky ghost!!

Hi everyone! I know it has been a while since I’ve put anything up. We’ve been keeping busy and enjoying our summer. This week Bentley was supposed to have surgery but it has been rescheduled. I’ll explain below. Just know that I’m grateful for all our friends and family and the support you have showed us these past couple weeks. Thank You! So we originally prepared for Bentley to  have his  PA Band tightened six months after his first surgery.  Then next year evaluate and see if he was a candidate for the double switch surgery. When we went to his cardiology follow-up in July to schedule the band tightening we were told that the pressure wasn’t what they were hoping  and that it didn’t look like Bentley would be a good candidate for the double switch surgery right now. They decided that he would still need to get his band tightened to attempt to make his heart stronger. So we scheduled his surgery for September 13. Fast forward to last week, Bentley had a cardio check up in prepar

We have had quite an eventful few weeks. I am grateful for everyone who prayed for Bentley, who offered help, those who did help, and cards and packages! We feel so blessed with all the love and support we have received! As we were preparing for Bentleys heart surgery one of the things that is important is to get a dental clearance. Because if you have any untreated cavities there is bacteria that can get into your blood and cause infection during heart surgery. So we went to the pediatric dentist and Bentley had some cavities that needed to be addressed. We couldn't do it in the dental office because they wanted to put him under because he was so little. However, to be put under anesthesia he had to do it at a hospital under a cardiac anesthesiologist because of his heart condition. It took three dentists, and three different hospitals before we found one that could treat him. We got into UCSF children's and we had it scheduled for a week before his surgery.  Wa

Since moving to Tracy, I have realized that a lot of people aren't aware of Bentleys heart. Not that I don't want people to know, I just have a hard time bringing it up. Before I update his condition, I'll just give a little background on what it is. Bentley was born with a rare heart condition called Congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (cctga).The easy way to explain it is the arteries on his heart are switched, the larger artery which is supposed pump blood to his body, is pumping blood to his lungs, and the smaller artery which is supposed to pump blood to his lungs, is pumping the blood to his body.  Cctga comes in 3 forms and Bentley has the most rare. His Cctga also causes him to have a heart block, which just means his the top and bottom of his heart aren't beating in sync, causing his heart to beat at a slower rate.  Most of the times when diagnosed with Cctga kids have other major issues with their hearts and need open hear

Once again I am playing catch-up, but times have been busy! We have had a great 2017 and we are looking forward to the new year. We also have some updates about Bentleys heart, But I will include all of that in a separate post! Have a happy new year! (I also still have yet to figure out how to format the blog with all the pictures:/ so I apologize for it not being pleasing to the eye!) September- September was a great month! alex turned 30! We had fun celebrating him, we also celebrated national teddy bear day and were able to make it to the oakland temple. And with the warm weather we have been spending lots of time exploring all of the parks around us! Happy 30th alex! national teddy bear day oakland Temple with my love October-We were able to LOTS of fall/Halloween activities this month! With MOPS we went to Del Osso farms and had a blast, we did downtown trick or treating, ward trunk or treating, we went to the mountain hose pumpkin festival, we rode t