When Christina Belboda looks at her son, Zayne Obileye, she’s thankful to have him in her life after he nearly died. In October 2018, when Belboda picked up her then 13-month-old son from her local daycare, she knew something was wrong with him.

Ella Chase was in the middle of her gymnastics season, getting ready for a state competition, when she began feeling a pain in her back. “Nothing I did was making it better, but I felt I had to push through the pain,” Ella said.

11-year-old Samir Rahman started complaining of sharp pains in the back of his head whenever his parents drove over speed bumps. His mother, Shanta Reza, initially dismissed her son’s concerns. Over time, Samir’s pain went away.

When Araceli Cantero Obregón was seven months pregnant, doctors in Nicaragua told her that her son Edgard Sequeira would have hydrocephalus, a condition in which excess cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) builds up within the ventricles of the brain.

“I was high-risk in my second trimester,” said Rivera. “I was given steroids to try to speed up the development of Tyani’s lungs but my kidneys were failing at the same time, and I was rushed into surgery.”

Three months after delivering healthy twin girls, the new parents noticed that one of their daughters, Ella, was developing differently than her sister, Lacy.

After years of long and frequent hospital stays, not being able to eat, and digestive and intestinal issues that required two multi-organ transplants — 5-year-old Elijah Marrow is enjoying the freedom to run around freely and eat pizza.

When Danilia “Amor” Aquino was born prematurely at 26 weeks in Orlando, she was showing early signs of liver disease. A few months later, she was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare, genetic, life-threatening liver disease that only appears in infants.

Nicole Hannah-Edgecomb was 24 weeks pregnant with her second child when she went to see her obstetrician for a checkup.