By Dave Andrusko
Looking at Beau, her 14-month-old daughter, Demi Goodman’s “chest swells with pride.” Beau is ”an amazing little girl,” Demi, 21, a stay-at-home mother from Birmingham, England told Elizabeth Archer of the Daily Express. “I always knew she would be a fighter.”
As is her mom.
Demi, who “was all over the moon” when she learned she was pregnant, was told at her 20-week scan in 2017 that her baby suffered from a very rare heart syndrome.
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome affects around one in every 5,000 babies, Archer reported. It “means the left side of the heart does not develop properly. In Beau’s case it was so underdeveloped it couldn’t be seen at all on the scan, meaning she only had half a heart.”
Demi told Archer she’d gone in to find out whether she was having a boy or a girl but came away with “devastating news.”
That news included a lengthy list of terrible conditions doctors said her might suffer from, including that she would never walk and might suffer brain damage. “I couldn’t believe what I was being told. I was heartbroken,” Demi told Archer in an interview.
“The doctor said it would probably be best to terminate the pregnancy because no one knew what kind of life the baby would have even if she did have the operations.”
By this time Demi was 22 weeks pregnant! “I thought about it a lot,” Demi said, “but I just knew she was going to be a fighter and I didn’t want to give up on her.” Demi gave birth to Beau in August 2017. Her baby girl weighed 6lb, 12oz.
“When I looked at her little face I fell in love,” Demi told the Christian Institute. Of course Beau faced a battery of surgeries, including open heart surgery after she was born and further emergency surgery in early 2018 when she was four months old. But now…
“Beau is walking and playing like any other girl her age,” the Christian Institute reported. “She’s a very happy baby and she’s always laughing,” Demi said.
Demi told Archer she couldn’t believe her doctors had advised her to abort.
“I’m glad I listened to my instincts and kept her safe. I’m so proud of her because she’s doing everything the doctors said she wouldn’t.”