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When 22-year-old Johanna Morton went in for her 12-week pregnancy check-up, she received terrible news.
The doctors had discovered a problem with her daughter’s heart. “They told me I was going to go home and miscarry. They said our baby wasn’t going to live,” Morton recounted.
Morton, however, knew she was going to give her daughter, Clara Ray, a fighting chance and continued the pregnancy.
Just a couple weeks later, the doctors told her the prognosis was still bleak; Clara would be stillborn.
Nothing could deter Morton. “From the beginning, I said we were going to see this thing through and we continued to celebrate her,” she explained.
Her doctors had no choice but to support her through her pregnancy and deliver Clara Ray via C-section on June 14.
Clara let out an “amazing cry” upon her birth, showing the world just how alive she was — but “then fear struck.” Morton and her husband lived in constant worry that their daughter wouldn’t make it through her surgeries, the day, or the night.
Clara spent over a month in the hospital undergoing surgeries for her congenital heart defects, heart block, and her organ development problem, Heterotaxy syndrome – but she was finally able to head home after all of the ordeals.
Now, six months later, the Mortons are “still in awe that she’s here today. Every single day that she’s here is a miracle.”
The doctors warn the parents that Clara’s heart may not be able to keep up with her growth, so the family is always treating and documenting each day as if it’s her last.
On the morning of November 20, the Mortons were able to share an incredibly tender moment as Clara witnessed her first snowfall.
“She was mesmerized,” Morton remembered. “For that moment, she wasn’t sick, she was just thrilled. My husband and I looked at each other and knew that whatever comes next, we’ll have this memory.”
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