An Okmulgee, Okla., woman's high-risk pregnancy has had the best possible outcome - the birth of a healthy baby.

Debra Day Schmidt's son, Johnathon, was born early Monday at University Hospital in Oklahoma City.Schmidt, 30, who survived a heart attack two months ago and has had two kidney transplants in the last eight years, considers her son's birth a miracle.

Dr. Larry Pennington, chief of transplant services at University Hospital, tends to agree. "Only about 2 percent of female transplant recipients manage to become pregnant," he said. "But of those who do, about 80 percent result in a live birth."

Pregnancy is not recommended for transplant recipients because it can increase the risk of organ rejection, Pennington said.

Although the anti-rejection drugs taken by transplant patients pose no harm to the fetus, pregnancy changes the way the body responds to these vital immune-suppression medications, he said.

In Schmidt's case, two transplant surgeons, a kidney specialist, a cardiologist and a high-risk obstetrician conferred on ways to manage her transplant graft, preserve her pregnancy and stabilize her enlarged heart.

On Tuesday, at least five doctors called or stopped by before the day-old newborn and his parents left for their home.

"It's very unusual to have a heart attack in your age group and during pregnancy, even among kidney transplant patients," cardiologist Chittur A. Sivaram told Schmidt.

"It's been a good deal," Pennington said. "We have a baby who's healthy, of normal birth weight and went full term."

Schmidt said it took a lot of prayers and a lot of doctoring.

Although doctors had offered no guarantees that she could carry her baby the whole nine months, Schmidt said she "had a lot of faith in God and thought my little boy was meant to be here."

For a time, however, Peter and Debra Day Schmidt had wondered whether their decision to have a child was the right one.

Schmidt has two sons, ages 12 and 13, from a previous marriage. Both children were born before she developed the kidney problems that she believed had made her infertile.

An undetected congenital urinary defect put Schmidt into kidney failure when she was 18. In 1988, after nearly three years on dialysis, she received a donor kidney from her brother.

But less than a year later, a case of chicken pox contracted from a child in her Sunday School class brought a viral infection that destroyed her new kidney.

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Schmidt received her second transplant in 1990. She almost lost that kidney 10 months later when she was hit by a drunk driver.

Schmidt credits the doctors at University Hospital for pulling her through.

Faith in their care was the reason Schmidt, who lives only 35 miles from Tulsa, opted to travel to Oklahoma City twice a week throughout her pregnancy.

"The doctors at University Hospital have been with me since 1988 when my kidneys first failed. They saved my life more than once. I simply wouldn't think of going anywhere else to have my baby," she said.

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