The lovely Hannah Lewis and her daughter Autumn (2 years). Hannah got pregnant with her daughter when she was just 19. She found out at 16 weeks along that her daughter had Gastroschisis meaning that her intestines had developed outside of her abdomen. Autumn spent the rest of her pregnancy on bedrest and at 35 weeks, had a placental abruption that required an emergency cesarean birth. Autumn was taken immediately to the NICU and Hannah was told that the merciful thing to do would be to let her daughter die. Hannah fought for her daughter and Autumn's condition continued to improve. She ended up losing 3/4 of her small intestine and was able to receive nutrition through a g-tube and central line. Autumn also had a lot of liver damage due to all the meds and interventions and was recommended for a liver transplant. Hannah researched and found that Children's hospital in Boston had a treatment that could potentially heal her and they were able to have her med-flighted there from their home in the Denver area. After two months of treatment, Autumn's liver was normal. Hannah had been told that Autumn would never be able to eat by mouth but at around 9 months she started to introduce foods orally. By 10 months, she was getting all of her nutrition from bottles and her G-tube and was able to have her central line removed which had been the source of 4 life threatening blood infections. Soon after, she wasn't using her g-tube either and is now able to fully feed herself. Autumn was also diagnosed with hip dysplasia and had to undergo two hip surgeries but learned to walk just before her second birthday. Before getting pregnant Hannah was training for Olympic pistol shooting and was in wonderful shape. Through her pregnancy and her daughter's health issues, she was unable to exercise like she was used to and physically found herself in a place where she very unhappy with her appearance. She is working to promote positive body image in her daughter and hopes that she can learn to embrace her scars so she decided she deserved the same for herself.
