She Delighted Over Her Baby for 6 Hours. Then a Turn

Megan Moss Johnson had a heart transplant 7 years ago
By Josh Rosenblatt,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 30, 2017 8:14 AM CDT
She Delighted Over Her Baby for 6 Hours. Then a Turn
Megan and Nathan Johnson with Eilee Kate   ("Team Johnson" GoFundMe page)

What began as an inspiring story came to a tragic conclusion this week when a 30-year-old Nashville woman who survived a heart transplant seven years ago died after giving birth to her first child, KSDK reports. Megan Moss Johnson, originally of Ferguson, Missouri, gave birth to daughter Eilee Kate around 2:40am Tuesday and spent six hours delighting over her girl. "Megan held, fed, and burped little Eilee," per a GoFundMe page. "[Husband] Nathan says they couldn't sleep because they were too excited. They talked all night and morning." Then Johnson lost consciousness; she died about two hours later. A friend tells the Tennessean doctors don't yet know what caused her death, though the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that pregnancies are considered high-risk for women who have had heart transplants.

Johnson was diagnosed with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, when she was just 15, the Post-Dispatch previously reported. She was put on a transplant list in February 2010 and in April developed pneumonia that doctors said made her too sick for a transplant; 12 hours later she made a surprise turnaround and a heart was en route to her. On Wednesday a GoFundMe page was set up for Eilee and Christian music artist Nathan Johnson, who a friend writes talked about Meg "every day. Half of his posts online are about his 'boo,' his 'goddess,' his 'beauty.'" It has raised $335,000 as of this writing, with the page's creator updating it to say, "I can't quit crying. Nathan and Eilee, we love you. Meg, we miss you. I'm raising the goal again. We're sending this girl to college." (A healthy baby, a tragic twist for her mom.)

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