CARRYING SKY, The First Year by Ash Adams

Public Project

CARRYING SKY, The First Year

Copyright Ash Adams 2024

Updated May 2020

Topics Birth, Black and White, Children, Documentary, Emotion, Family, Featured Film, Health/Healing, Illness, Mixed Medium, Multimedia, Photography

Jennifer Allison decided that she would carry her baby, Sky, as far as she wanted to go. Sky was diagnosed at 20 weeks gestation with heterotaxy and right atrial isomerism, a complicated set of birth defects, that gave her a 15-20% chance of surviving the first year of life. Jennifer was told that while Sky was essentially like any other baby in utero, there was a possibility that she would die shortly after birth or need immediate invasive intervention. While Jennifer was given the option to terminate the pregnancy, she wanted to have her baby anyways. "I'm not religious," she says. "It was just the right thing for me. I told her I would carry her as far as she wanted to go." Sky is now 15 months old and has survived 3 open heart surgeries, but her future is still uncertain. There are many more surgeries to come, the next of which will be this fall. Many children with heterotaxy do not survive the toddler years, and each surgery brings its own set of risks.

This is a first chapter.

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Ash Adams

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