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Australian influencer Leah Jay Ramsey is mourning the loss of her daughter months after a terrifying medical experience. Ramsey, who is married to Strong Pilates co-founder Michael Ramsey, announced her pregnancy with the couple’s second child at the beginning of the year.
Within weeks of the announcement, she found herself hospitalized due to a strep infection that ended up in her heart, requiring her to undergo open-heart surgery while pregnant. After documenting her pregnancy on social media, she announced that her daughter had passed away approximately a month before her due date.
The couple announced the death via Instagram.
Leah and Michael made a joint post on the site, sharing a black and white picture of them sitting on a hospital bed and holding their daughter, who was wrapped in a blanket.
“Our daughter. Rowe,” the post began, with a white dove emoji next to it. “The strongest little girl we will never get to know.”
“You made it through infections and multiple surgeries, even when the odds were against you. But it just wasn’t your time. We are absolutely devastated. Rest peacefully. Love always, Mum, Dad and your big brother Reeves.”
Many of Ramsey’s friends and followers commented, offering messages of comfort and condolences.
She announced her pregnancy in January.
The Instagram post announcing her second pregnancy showed Leah and Michael facing each other while he stared at her growing belly. A second photo showed three-year-old son Reeves sleeping while holding a sonogram printout.
“The sequel #julybaby,” she captioned the post.
Not even two weeks after announcing her pregnancy, Ramsey made another post, showing her in a hospital bed.
“The last few weeks have been the scariest and most eye-opening of my life,” she wrote.
“What started as a swollen, painful leg turned into emergency surgery to remove a blood clot. From there, doctors discovered an infection in my heart that may have been sitting in my body for close to a year — quietly causing inflammation, sickness, and eventually sending a clot down into my leg.”
She wrote that she “kept thinking it was just bad luck, pregnancy symptoms, or that I needed to push through it. But my body was trying to tell me something much bigger.”
Leah Jay Ramsey had to undergo open heart surgery very early in her pregnancy.
In a January 28 Instagram post, Michael Ramsey shared an update about his wife while she was still hospitalized.
He shared that doctors learned the mitral valve in his wife’s heart was leaking as a result of the infection. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the “mitral valve sits between your upper and lower left heart chambers. It opens to let blood flow from your left atrium to your left ventricle. Sometimes, your mitral valve doesn’t work right because it’s too narrow or leaky. This can make your heart work harder to pump blood to your body.”
Ramsey wrote that doctors would “likely need to replace the valve with a mechanical valve but will try to save it if possible.”
“We’ve been told there are significant risks for the baby, but Leah is our main priority right now,” he explained.
The surgery was terrifying.
On January 30, Leah Jay Ramsey shared an Instagram post revealing what her first week in the hospital had been like. She also explained that her open-heart surgery would take four to six hours, and that her heart would have to be stopped for 80 minutes.
On February 2, her husband shared post-surgery updates on his Instagram Stories, People reported. “Surgery went really well,” he wrote. “She has a new valve and is showing positive signs her heart is strong.”
The following day, he shared another update via his Stories, informing his followers that the baby was “doing well,” after surgery. He also shared ultrasound photos.
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