Armani Milby, from the US, had to be delivered via an emergency C-section at 33 weeks after she was diagnosed with a severe form of lymphangioma which causes benign growths in the lymph vessels
A mum has nicknamed her newborn daughter ‘baby Hulk’ after the child was born with a rare condition that makes her chest and arms appear to be extremely muscular.
Armani Milby, who is now nine-months-old, was delivered via an emergency C-section at 33 weeks after she was diagnosed with a severe form of lymphangioma, which causes benign growths in the lymph vessels, leading to her mum Chelsey to liken her to Marvel superhero Hulk.
Armani was born weighing 12lbs, three times more than the average-sized baby at that point in gestation due to the extremely rare congenital condition that left people thinking her mum was expecting triplets, as she tipped the scales at over 200lbs when pregnant.
Chelsey, 33, from Kentucky, US, found out that Armani had the condition after an ultrasound at the 17-week mark of the pregnancy and doctors were concerned over suspected fluid around her heart.
Chelsey said: “I had never, ever, heard of the diagnosis before and honestly, I had looked into it, and I didn’t really like the results with some of the pictures.
“When I found out, to be honest, I was devastated, I was heartbroken. I didn’t understand what happened, what went wrong, because I had two other healthy babies, and I cried every day. Every day, I asked God why.
“We never considered an abortion even though it was mentioned to us almost immediately after it was discovered there were some major concerns with our unborn baby, but we just wanted to know how we could help her when she was born.
“They literally gave her a zero percent chance. They said she wouldn’t make it and that she probably wouldn’t be crying when she came out.”
Depending on the area of the body affected by Lymphangioma, it can cause serious health problems including problems with breathing or vision.
Despite a disheartening prognosis from doctors, Chelsey always held hope for her unborn child and luckily for Armani, it’s thought her condition is treatable with surgery.
After a difficult birth Chelsey described what she felt when she first saw her child and said: “When I actually saw her, I cried even more because I had never seen anything like that but I didn’t care what she looked like, I loved her anyway.”
Once she had been born, Armani and her family were moved over 100 miles away to Cincinnati for three months in a specialist hospital where she began to make her recovery against the odds.
Now, Armani has been undergoing constant treatment to remove excess fluid from her body, however, with copious amounts of excess skin, she still currently weighs 21 lbs and wears clothes that are made for babies who are twice her age.
Armani is scheduled for surgery later this year where doctors would extract extra lymphatic vessels from her body which would help her body shrink down to the correct size and over the coming years, she would undergo surgery to remove the extra skin.
Source: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/mum-nicknames-daughter-baby-hulk-31025321