She almost died during childbirth. Now she has a new kidney from her own mom

On Sept. 3, Kylie Mohr marked two anniversaries. A year before, her first son, Lincoln, was born. That same day, Mohr nearly died.

During an emergency Caesarean section, the 29-year-old’s blood pressure climbed so high that she almost bled out on the operating table. What her doctors didn’t realize at the time was that Mohr had HELLP syndrome, a rare condition that can threaten the lives of women in the late stages of pregnancy or shortly after childbirth.

HELLP is a severe form of the hypertensive disorder preeclampsia, which affects 5 to 8 percent of all pregnancies, according to the Preeclampsia Foundation. And it nearly cost Mohr her life.

After Lincoln’s birth, Mohr suffered twice from congestive heart failure and lost functioning in both her kidneys. She spent the next 11 months on dialysis, struggling to raise a newborn while tethered to a machine.

But this Sept. 3, Mohr was no longer fighting for her life. She actually felt the best she had in months. Five weeks before, Mohr’s mother, Kelli Caudill, had given her daughter a life-saving gift. She donated one of her own two kidneys. And she said she would do it again.

“I would do it 1,000 times over,” Caudill said. “I would give her 100 kidneys.”

Caudill said she and her daughter always have been close. The past year has only brought them closer.

‘Hello Kidney’

At 5:30 a.m. on surgery day, Mohr, Caudill and half-a-dozen relatives congregated in the hospital, laughing and causing a bit of a commotion.

“We were the loudest people in the waiting room,” said Mohr, who along with her husband, Joe, is a member of the Georgia Air National Guard at Robins Air Force Base.

The family had spent the weekend together in Atlanta, preparing for the upcoming procedure with a kidney-themed celebration.

“We called it the ‘Hello Kidney’ party and decorated a cake like Hello Kitty, except it was shaped like a kidney, Caudill said. “It had the little kitty face on it. It was fun.”

Once the hour for surgery grew closer, though, the mood changed. While Mohr and the rest of the family lingered in the waiting room, Caudill went back first for prep. Caudill didn’t expect to see her daughter again until after the procedure, but just as hospital staff wheeled her back for surgery, she passed by the door of Mohr’s room, and the two caught eyes.

“I was so hopeful and positive to get her life back for her, and of course, terrified, hoping everything would go OK,” Caudill said. “That one little moment, it was probably 30 seconds that we got to wave to each other as I was being wheeled past. It was very, very emotional.”

Caudill said she’s never loved her daughter more.

The next thing Caudill knew, she was waking up from the anesthesia, groggy and nauseated. All she could think about was Mohr.

“The first thing I thought was, I wanted to see her and make sure she was OK,” Caudill said.

Mohr bounced back quickly from surgery and went home just two days later. Caudill’s own recovery, however, proved to be more difficult than she initially expected.

“I’ve never had surgery, and I assumed that I was gonna breeze through it, and it was gonna be awesome,” Caudill said.

It was awesome, she said. She had no complications, and the procedure went about as smoothly as she could have hoped. She didn’t expect to be in so much pain afterward, though.

After three days of catheters, IV fluids and soreness, Caudill was reunited with Mohr and spent a week with her daughter and mother in Georgia, resting and recuperating. By the second week of August, though, she was eager to get back to her daily routine.

Caudill hoped life quickly would return to normal after surgery. For the past year, Mohr’s health had completely uprooted the family’s sense of normalcy. After watching her daughter endure months of emergency room visits, dialysis treatments and paralyzing fatigue, Caudill had become so intent on restoring her daughter’s well being that she had overlooked the impact such an intensive surgery might have on her own body.

But healing from surgery has helped Caudill better understand her daughter’s health struggle.

“Maybe what Kylie learned and what I learned are the opposites of each other because I think Kylie, her whole life maybe, doubted her strength,” Caudill said.

Then her voice began to tremble.

“It’s shown her just how amazingly strong and resilient and powerful she is,” Caudill said, through tears, “and how — and this part is kind of reminding me that, you know, I’m almost 50, and maybe I’m not as resilient or powerful as I once was or maybe just thought I was.”

Mohr gave her mother more credit. She said Caudill’s “hard as rocks.”

“I always knew she was tough. She was a single mom for a while,” Mohr said. “And it’s just kind of intensified everything I already knew about my mom, that she’s amazing.”

Receiving a kidney from her mother has expanded what it means to love someone, Mohr said. She hopes she can give as much love to Lincoln as her mother’s given her.

“I would give him my heart if he ever needed it. But it’s one thing to say, and it’s another to do it,” Mohr said. “And I hope it makes me a better parent, just that I don’t ever take him for granted, and the time that I’ve been given.”

‘It wasn’t just for me’

On surgery day, Caudill wore her grandmother’s pin to the hospital, the same one that adorned Mohr’s bouquet at her wedding. More than five decades before, Caudill’s grandmother, Dorothy Meyers, had donated a kidney to her own child.

“The whole thing felt serendipitous, kind of, if that makes sense, that I was able to be Kylie’s donor, and my grandmother got to be her son’s donor,” Caudill said. “It just felt like a gift to be able to follow in her footsteps.”

Mohr said her great-grandmother, who she grew up calling Mimi, lived to be 98 years old, with just one kidney.

“She was just such the matriarch of our family for so long that, it’s really, it’s really incredible that Mom kind of got to honor her that way,” Mohr said. “It was like it was — it wasn’t just for me. It was for Mimi, as well.”

Now Mohr is one year into her own journey as a mother. On Lincoln’s first birthday, Mohr and her husband, Joe, Skyped with family members across the country as they lit candles on a cake filled with rainbow sprinkles and sang “Happy Birthday.”

After opening some presents, the 1 year old fell asleep early, exhausted from the excitement of the day and still getting over a cold from the week before.

Once Lincoln went to bed, Mohr found herself riddled with guilt. Her son’s first birthday was supposed to be a happy occasion. But it was tinted with dark memories from the day he was born and all of the complications that followed.

Mohr hopes to tell her son the story of his birth one day, though, when he’s ready.

“By the time I think he’s old enough to know what happened and why Mom has three kidneys and her belly’s all scarred, I think he’ll — I’ll be way past feeling anything other than grateful for what happened to me,” Mohr said. “(That’s) my hope, at least.”

Samantha Max is a Report for America corps member and reports for The Telegraph with support from the News/CoLab at Arizona State University. Follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/samantha.max.9 and on Twitter @samanthaellimax. Learn more about Report for America at www.reportforamerica.org.

This story was originally published September 7, 2018 at 11:30 AM.