A ‘miracle’ baby who was born without eyes and had half his brain removed has amazed doctors with all his milestones.
Five-month-old Halim Carter has anophthalmia. This is a rare condition in which babies are born without one or both eyes.
“The doctors are very surprised by her condition,” said her mother, Arianna Carter, 19. told SWNS.
“We were told she would never be able to walk or talk, but she is now almost crawling despite not having the use of the right side of her body. She is the best baby ever and is so talkative!” Carter gushed.
The Salisbury, North Carolina, mother found out she was pregnant in November 2022, but there were no complications.
Carter said Halim appeared “perfectly healthy” at her 20-week routine checkup.
It wasn’t until Carter gave birth on July 22 that she realized something was wrong.
Doctors quickly took Halim away to clean her body and pulled Carter’s mother, Casey, 40, aside.
They told her that Halim might have been born without eyes and were trying to determine whether her face was simply swollen.
Casey was told that Harlem would be having a CT scan the next day, giving her the life-changing news to share with her daughter.
“I wasn’t paying attention to what the doctors were saying to my mom,” Carter recalled. “I was just holding Halim and spending quality time with my baby.”
Then, on the first day of his life, Harim had a seizure. Her CT scan revealed that she was born without eyes.
“It really broke my heart. I was wondering how she could no longer be seen as a normal person,” Carter lamented.
“It was very difficult for me, but when she went back to the NICU and they told me she had a lot of other illnesses, I thought, ‘I’m just going to love her,'” she said. added.
SWNS reports that Harlym has been diagnosed with galactosemia, a condition that prevents her from converting lactose into glucose, and must be fed through a tube.
She also has nasal atresia, where the nasal passages are blocked by bone or tissue.
“At first, I automatically thought her symptoms were related to me. Any mother would blame herself,” Carter said. “But doctors said there was no clear reason why she was born with so many conditions, it was just genetics.”
Doctors also discovered that the left side of Halim’s brain was underdeveloped after she suffered several seizures.
In August, she underwent a hemispherectomy to separate the left and right sides of her brain.
The surgery left her with permanent weakness on the right side of her body.
“My doctors always told me to think about Harlem’s quality of life, but I just didn’t want to pull the plug,” Carter said. “They said she would not be able to speak, walk, use the right side of her body and there would be a global delay.”
But things are going better than expected for Harlem.
Carter said she crawls most of the time and can sit upright, hold her head up, babble and drink water from a bottle.
“She imitates all my actions, like foaming with my tongue and whistling. That’s all a good sign. Doctors don’t think she’ll have any type of brain activity. “I didn’t,” Carter said with a twinkle in his eye.
“More than anything, she’s very happy,” she enthused. “She loves everyone and she laughs at everything. And she loves to be held.”
Carter now aims to enroll Halim in a mainstream school when he is old enough.
She also tries not to stress about the experience she lacks in Haarim.
“We went to see the Christmas lights the other day and she didn’t get to enjoy looking at the Christmas lights,” Carter said. “I just kept thinking about all the things she was going to miss.”