by Whitney Barthel posted in Parenting

?I left the hospital with my two-week-old daughter, Lamees, and boarded a 17-hour flight knowing that she might die in my arms. I was terrified, but I had vowed to sit quietly and not say a word until we landed, even if that meant holding her as she grew cold."
This statement made by New Zealand-born Dubai-based singer Aria Nichols is enough to get any mom's attention. Nichols? story, which took place in 2016, is a perfect example of a mom?s love for their child and is nothing short of heroic.
Lamees Nichols was born in New Zealand with a condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare congenital condition that leaves the left side of the heart underdeveloped and dangerously limits blood being pumped throughout the body.
In an interview with BabyCenter, Nichols says that she knew her daughter would be born with a heart condition, but she and doctors were hopeful her baby would be a candidate for surgery: "With surgery there is upwards of 85 percent chance of survival, without it is 100 percent fatal," she says.
Unfortunately, Lamees was born small and missing two fingers, so New Zealand doctors no longer considered her a candidate for surgery.
As Nichols and doctors made palliative (end-of-life) care plans for her baby, she was secretly obtaining a passport for her newborn and consulting doctors who would consider doing surgery on little Lamees elsewhere.

Eleven hours after being discharged from the hospital...