After surviving a heart and kidney transplant, a Mississippi woman recently gave birth to a baby she thought she might never have.
According to Fox NewsBrooke Lilly, 28, of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, welcomed a daughter named Lauren last June.
“I’ve had a few miscarriages in the past, so it was a little hard for me to get excited at first,” she told the outlet. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”
When Lillie was just a toddler, she was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy. This is a condition in which the heart muscle is “hardened, damaged, or both.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because of this disease, she underwent a heart transplant when she was just over a year old.
“On December 11, 1996, I received a heart transplant. And on that day, the worst day of my life, the donor mother decided that by making her son an organ donor, she would not only save my life, but also the lives of others. “We made a decision that also saved seven lives,” Lilly said, according to Forest Health.
Forrest said Leal then realized he was fighting. chronic kidney disease By the time she was in her 20s. She needed another transplant, this time a kidney.
“The anti-rejection drugs she had been taking all her life damaged her kidneys and left her with chronic renal failure.” Mr. Forest explained. Lily started her dialysis, but she found her kidney donor, her husband Adam, in 2019.
“In the end, he was literally, quite literally, the perfect match for me. [as] My husband,” she said, according to Fox.
Although the couple successfully survived the transplant, they faced other challenges.Doctors warned Lillie that the pregnancy was risky.
“My transplant team wasn’t really onboard with the idea of me having a baby, so I was pretty disappointed,” she said. “But I just prayed that God would somehow give me a family.”
Lily added that faith was a top priority for the couple as they began their journey to parenthood.
“I never gave up praying. I prayed every day, but all I knew in my heart was that I was going to be a mother,” she said.
