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26-year-old Aimee Morrisby had been diagnosed with Hirschsprung disease when she was a child. The condition caused her many bowel, large intestine, and colon problems over the years, all of which had to be treated by surgery.
Though Aimee’s health is now stable, the 50-odd surgeries she’d had to treat her disease had transformed her uterus into a mess of scar tissue.
Unfortunately, no one had realized this had happened until Aimee and her husband, Jake, began to try having a baby. Aimee went through eight rounds of IVF and four miscarriages before she returned to her doctor to have her situation reassessed.
“I met with my bowel surgeon and he handed me a picture of what was supposed to be my uterus and it was a big ball of scar tissue,” Aimee remembered. “That's when I went back to my IVF specialist and he said to me, ‘You're not going to get pregnant.’”
Aimee and Jake finally agreed to stop trying for a child and were just beginning to force themselves to get used to this new idea when, suddenly, Aimee’s little sister, Shayna, called them.
It was around 10 o’clock at night, and when Aimee picked up the phone, Shayna’s only words were, “Let’s have a baby.”
Aimee could barely believe what she was hearing. “The first words that came out of my mouth were, ‘Are you sure?’”
“Why would she put her life at risk to have a baby for me? I couldn't believe someone was going to risk everything for me,” Aimee said.
But no, Shayna wasn’t joking.
Not long after the call, Aimee left her job so she could move to be closer to her sister and Shayna underwent IVF to become impregnated with one of Aimee’s remaining, frozen embryos.
The pregnancy went smoothly, and both Aimee and Jake were present for the emotional moment of Shayna’s water birth.
Aimee was overwhelmed. “Not only was I seeing my daughter enter the world, I was watching my sister give birth. There were two totally different emotions,” she explained. “When Francesca came out of the water and my husband cut the cord I couldn't move. I could not believe what she had just done.”
Aimee and Jake’s daughter, Francesca, is now seven months old. Her parents say that she’s a “thriving” little girl, and her aunt Shayna has recovered very quickly after her pregnancy and labor.
We with this happy family all the best in their future together.
