Dad honors 4-year-old daughter by getting a tattoo of her open-heart surgery scar

Everly “Evie” Backe was born with “a critical, complex congenital heart defect.”She had her first open-heart surgery when she was just three days old in August 2017. Her mother, Lauren Backe, says Evie had undergone two more before turning a year old.

The surgeries left big scars on Evie’s chest which the family calls her “zipper.”

To honor her daughter, Matt Backe, recently got a tattoo on his chest similar to Evie’s scar.

“It really makes me happy that they look the same,” Matt said.

Lauren tells PEOPLE that their daughter reacted to the tattoo by saying, “My daddy got a tattoo like my zipper so that I don’t feel alone…and he wants to be special like me.” 

Lauren also had a special tattoo — an EKG line with a heart in the middle on her forearm. The inking has Evie’s first initial on one end and son Jack’s on the other.

Lauren tells PEOPLE she first learned about Evie’s heart complications when she was about 33 weeks pregnant. Evie spent the first month of her life in a specialized pediatric cardiology unit and was placed on a feeding tube and an oxygen tank for several months after returning home, per GMA.

When she was not in the hospital, Lauren said the family would travel 130 miles round-trip for her appointments.

“She spent a lot of that first 13 months of her life in and out of the hospital,” Lauren told GMA. “But we were grateful that they taught us so much that we could also be at home.”

Evie loved the idea from the beginning, but that didn’t stop her from playfully teasing her father about “copying her.”

Matt and Lauren began receiving touching messages from strangers after they shared their story in a Facebook post.

“We had no idea people would react as strongly or emotionally to it as they have,” says Lauren.

Evie will need another heart surgery soon to replace a conduit put in her heart during her third open-heart surgery at 11 months old. Lauren said that her family is grateful for both “the surgeries that exist to help” Evie and “how far heart research and technology has come.”

Lauren and Matt now work with other families that have children with congenital heart defects in various ways. They volunteer at CHD events and sit on foundation boards. Their goal, Lauren said, is to make sure no one feels alone as they once did.

Source: PEOPLE