My baby girl, Zhi En, is four months old.
And almost every single day of her life so far has been spent inside a hospital.
While other babies learn the comfort of cradles, quiet naps, and the gentle rhythm of home, my daughter has learned something very different. She has learned how to fight for breath. How to endure discomfort. How to survive in a world she was never meant to enter so soon.
Zhi En was born prematurely on June 4, 2025, at just 34 weeks of pregnancy. She weighed only 1.12 kilograms. When I first held her, she felt impossibly light, almost fragile enough to disappear in my arms. Before she even opened her eyes, before she could cry or stretch or grasp a finger, doctors were already delivering news that would change our lives forever.
She was diagnosed with Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA).
It is a rare and serious congenital heart defect. One that prevents oxygen-rich blood from circulating properly through the body. The words sounded clinical, distant, unreal. But the meaning was clear and terrifying: without surgery, our baby would not survive.
Yet even then, there was another obstacle.
She was too small.
Her body was not strong enough to withstand the full corrective open-heart surgery she desperately needed. So the doctors made the only choice available at the time. They performed a temporary palliative procedure, meant to ease her symptoms and give her heart and lungs some relief. The hope was simple but fragile: buy time. Give her a chance to grow. Give her body the strength it needed for the surgery that would eventually save her life.
We held onto that hope with everything we had.
Days turned into weeks inside the hospital. Zhi En lived surrounded by machines that monitored every heartbeat, every breath. Tubes helped her breathe. Lines delivered nutrition and medication. We learned to celebrate numbers on screens, to fear sudden alarms, to measure progress in grams gained and oxygen levels stabilized.
Then, by late July, everything changed again.
Zhi En’s oxygen levels dropped dangerously low. Her tiny body struggled to cope. Doctors warned us that her brain was at risk. She was still severely underweight—only 1.8 kilograms—but waiting any longer was no longer an option.
The decision was made to proceed with the full corrective heart surgery.
It was the moment every parent dreads. She was still so small. So fragile. But without the surgery, she would not survive.
The operation lasted fourteen hours.
Fourteen hours of waiting in silence. Fourteen hours of praying without words. Fourteen hours of imagining every possible outcome and trying not to break under the weight of fear. When the surgeons finally came to speak with us, they told us that Zhi En had survived the procedure.
She was alive.
But her fight had only entered another chapter.
After surgery, Zhi En was placed on ECMO—a life-support machine that temporarily takes over the work of the heart and lungs. Her body needed help to recover from what it had endured. Soon after, she suffered severe internal bleeding and required multiple emergency transfusions. Her body became so swollen that doctors were unable to close her chest immediately.
Seeing your child like that—open, vulnerable, sustained entirely by machines—is a pain no parent can ever fully describe.
Her recovery was slow and uncertain.
She remained on ventilation for a long time. She required powerful medications. Eventually, she underwent another surgery just to close her chest. Even then, complications continued. Zhi En developed mild pneumonia, making breathing even harder for lungs that had already been through so much trauma.
There were days when progress felt painfully slow.
Days when it seemed like we were standing still.
Days when fear returned quietly, sitting heavy in our hearts.
But Zhi En kept fighting.
She did not fight loudly or dramatically. She fought in the only way she could—by staying. By breathing. By holding on, one moment at a time. Nurses and doctors often remarked on her resilience. To us, she was simply our daughter, doing everything she could to survive.
After 98 days in the hospital, something we had barely dared to imagine finally happened.
We were allowed to bring her home.
She still needed a feeding tube. She still required daily medications. Her care did not suddenly become easy. But she was stable. She was safe. And for the first time, she was home—sleeping in our arms instead of under hospital lights.
That moment felt unreal.
We believed, cautiously, that the worst might be behind us.
But life tested us again.
Just a few weeks later, Zhi En developed a fever. Fear returned instantly. We brought her back to the hospital, and tests soon revealed the cause: RSV.
RSV is a respiratory virus that can be dangerous for any infant. For a baby like Zhi En—who had undergone major heart surgery, spent months on ventilation, and had fragile lungs—it was especially serious.
She struggled with nasal congestion and coughing. Feeding became difficult again. Her oxygen levels dropped, and she was admitted back into the hospital.
She has now been there for over two weeks.
Recovery this time has been slow.
At four months old, Zhi En weighs only 3.1 kilograms. Her body bears the marks of what she has endured—scars, sensitivities, and a history far heavier than her tiny frame. She has faced more pain, procedures, and uncertainty than most people will face in a lifetime.
And yet, she continues to fight.
As her parents, we are exhausted in ways we never knew existed. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. But when we look at our daughter, we know one thing with absolute certainty: giving up is not an option.
Zhi En has taught us what courage truly looks like.
Not the kind that shouts.
But the kind that survives quietly.
She was born too soon. She entered the world already fighting. And four months later, she is still here—still breathing, still growing, still holding on.
And we will continue to hold on with her, for as long as it takes.