Christmas Eve is a rare birthday, and it’s a fitting birthday for a baby girl who was a gift to her own family, and those of other sick babies.

When Krysta Davis was four months pregnant with her daughter, Rylei Arcadia Lovett, Krysta and her husband Dereck got some heartbreaking news. Baby Rylei had Anencephaly. Her brain was underdeveloped to a fatal degree. Doctors gave Krysta the option of having Rylei then, in her second trimester, or carrying her to term so that her tiny organs could be donated to babies who needed them.

“If I wasn’t able to bring my baby home, at least others could bring theirs home,” Davis told ABC affiliate News Channel 9.

As heartbroken as she was, Krysta carried her baby girl for five more months, giving her body time to grow the organs that would be such an amazing gift to families who were in a kind of pain the Lovetts know all too well.

Doctors told the couple that Rylei would probably live for about 30 minutes after birth, but Rylei held on for an entire week. “There’s no way to describe how amazing it felt. When you go to thinking you’ll only have 30 minutes with your child and you get an entire week,” Davis told News Channel 9.

For that week, Rylei got all the cuddles and skin-to-skin contact a baby could ask for. “I wouldn’t trade this week for anything in the whole wide world,” she wrote on a Facebook page dedicated to Rylei’s memory, adding that she was so proud of her daughter and the fight she put up.

Rylei was then taken for surgery, and although some of her organs were no longer viable due to oxygen loss, some very important ones were.

“They said her heart valves will go toward saving two other babies and the lungs will be sent off for research to see what else can be learned about Anencephaly from them,” Krysta wrote.

Krysta and Dereck only got to hold onto their baby for a week. It’s not fair and that pain is unimaginable. But now, two other families will get to hold their babies for a lot longer. It can’t take away Krysta’s pain, but it does make her happy to know that somewhere, another mama is holding a little piece of Rylei.

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