Money raised from the Norton Home & BMW Raffle helps children fighting for a chance to live

PROSPECT, Ky. (WDRB+WAVE) — When you buy a raffle ticket for the Norton Home & BMW Raffle, you are helping the hospital serve many families. That includes the Hemming family.

Before 5-year-old Charleigh Hemming was born, her parents didn’t know what to expect.

“I just (couldn’t) wait for the day I wake up and fear isn’t the first thing on my mind,” Amy Hemming said.

When Hemming was about three months pregnant, she had a genetic screening to find out the gender. She and her husband, Nick, learned the baby would be a girl. They also discovered she was at high risk for health complications upon birth.

“With Charleigh, she came out and was immediately rushed to the NICU,” Nick Hemming said. “The nurses there were sweet enough so she could just hold her and see her for a brief second.”

Amy Hemming said she begged to do that. That’s when doctors discovered a rare congenital heart defect called a vascular ring. She would need open heart surgery, but not immediately.

At seven weeks old, when Charleigh wasn’t growing and was also vomiting and sleeping 23 hours a day, surgery was done at Norton Children’s Hospital.

“We were really grieving just the normal newborn experience, and that was kind of robbed from us,” Amy Hemming said. “With Charleigh, it was just preparing for surgery and preparing for recovery and is she going to make it.”

Saying goodbye to their tiny baby for surgery was hard.

“It’s something I think about a lot, thinking ‘Is this the last time I’ll ever see her,’” Nick Hemming said.

The surgery was a success.

“I remember when they came back in and said that she was off the ECMO machine and her heart was beating on its own again the relief that I didn’t even know I was holding my breath for,” Amy Hemming said. “You feel so helpless sitting there.”

The Hemmings said they are grateful to the staff at Norton Children’s Hospital and are looking forward to the new campus that will be built in Jeffersontown, where they live, that will serve kids like Charleigh and her big sister Dottie.

“I do tell them superheroes are real,” Amy Hemming said. “They just don’t wear capes. They wear scrubs.”

Amy Hemming is a mental health therapist. Now, she is getting certified to help other families who go through something traumatic during pregnancy or at birth.

To get your raffle ticket, click here.