This is a period of time that looks different from the rest, and that's because it was. Unbeknownst to my wife and I, my son was born with a congenital heart defect called ALCAPA. For the engineers reading this: that means the in was connected to the out, half his heart wasn't getting oxygenated blood. While on the way to his one month checkup, our little Harry had a heart attack.
Erin and I went from being standard issue new parents to something else entirely. In the 24 hours following his heart attack all of this happened: we went to the local ER, were admitted to the local pediatric ICU, to a helicopter transfer to CHOP's Cardiac ICU, to Harry going on full heart-lung bypass and open heart surgery. All within 24 hours.
We were lucky. Harry's surgeon was phenomenal and the little nugget healed faster than the docs expected. After a few stressful weeks of recovery we got to go home. Harry needed special care though and my wife needed to go back to work, so I became a stay-at-home dad.
I spent the next few months struggling through being a dad and exclusively a dad. For me, who was and still is very career driven, it was a hard time. After a while, Harry's recovery went really well and I decided to re-enter the workforce with the support of my wife and family.
