Baby born without eyes who had half her brain removed doing well

Parenting

By Tracy Swartz

A “miracle” baby who was born without eyes and had half her brain removed is stunning doctors by hitting all her milestones.

5-month-old Harlym Carter has anophthalmia — a rare disorder where a baby is born without one or both eyes.

“Doctors are extremely surprised at how she’s doing,” mom Allyanna Carter, 19, told SWNS.

“I was told she’d never be able to walk or talk — but she’s nearly crawling, even though she can’t use the right side of her body. She’s the best baby ever — and so talkative!” Carter gushed.

The Salisbury, North Carolina, mom found out she was pregnant in November 2022 and suffered no complications.

Harlym looked “perfectly healthy” at her routine 20-week scan, Carter noted.

It wasn’t until Carter gave birth on July 22 that she learned something was amiss.

Doctors immediately whisked Harlym away to clean her — and pulled Carter’s mom, Kacie, 40, to the side.

They told her there was a possibility Harlym had been born without eyes — they were trying to discern whether her face was just really swollen.

Kacie was told Harlym would go for a CT scan the following day — and she was left to break the life-changing news to her daughter.

“I wasn’t paying attention to what the doctors were telling my mom,” Carter recalled. “I was just holding Harlym, having quality time with my baby.”

Then, at 1 day old, Harlym had a seizure. The CT confirmed she’d been born without eyes.

“I was absolutely heartbroken. I was thinking about how she’d never be looked at as regular,” Carter lamented.

“It was very hard for me — but when she was transferred back to the NICU, I was told she had a lot of other conditions, and I thought, ‘I’m going to love her anyway,’” she added.

Harlym has been diagnosed with galactosemia — the inability to convert milk sugars into glucose — and has to be fed through a tube, SWNS reports.

She also has choanal atresia, where the nasal passages are blocked by bone or tissue.

“At first I automatically assumed her conditions had something to do with me — any mom is going to blame herself,” Carter said. “But doctors told me there wasn’t a clear reason why she was born with so many conditions — it’s just genetics.”

Doctors also discovered the left side of Harlym’s brain was underdeveloped after she had several seizures.

She underwent a hemispherectomy in August to disconnect the left side of her brain from her right.

The surgery left her with permanent weakness in the right side of her body.

“Doctors were constantly telling me to think about Harlym’s quality of life — but I didn’t just want to pull the plug,” Carter recounted. “They said she wouldn’t be able to talk or walk, use the right side of her body — and she’d have global delay.”

But things are going better than expected for Harlym.

Carter says she’s almost crawling and she’s able to sit upright, hold her head up, babble, and drink from a bottle.

“She copies everything I do — like blowing bubbles with my tongue, or whistling. It’s all a good sign — doctors didn’t think she’d have any type of brain activity,” Carter beamed.

“Above all, she’s so happy,” she enthused. “She loves everybody, she laughs at everything — and she loves being held.”

Moving forward, Carter aims to enroll Harlym in a mainstream school when she’s old enough.

She’s also trying hard not to stress about the experiences Harlym is missing.

“We went to go and see Christmas lights the other day, but she doesn’t get to see them and enjoy them,” Carter said. “I just kept thinking about all the things she’s going to miss out on.”