Atlanta woman has baby, heart transplant within five months

Atlanta - Jasmine Craft spends her days trying to keep up with her 8-month-old daughter Aleina.

"She's getting to the point where she's learning to crawl and sitting up," Craft says.  "So, she's trying to get into everything that's around."

Life for the Collier Heights 32-year-old feels wonderfully normal after a really rocky couple of years.

In the span of 5 months in 2022, Craft gave birth to Aleina and had a heart transplant.

While she was pregnant, Jasmine's heart began to show signs it was faltering.

Her first sign: Swollen feet. This symptom, however, often happens in pregnancy.

Craft then says she gained 11 pounds in a single week.

Later in her pregnancy, her blood pressure suddenly dropped. It was so severe, Craft ended up in a cardiac ICU.

"From that point, it was determined that my heart was operating at about 25-30%," she told FOX 5.

Craft was in heart failure at the tender age of 31.

"I was devastated," she said.

At 32 weeks, Craft woke up one night struggling to breathe, and was hospitalized again.

With her heart failing on both sides and no longer able to pump properly, fluid was building in her chest.

"So, it was determined then, 'Okay, we have to deliver soon, because, if we don't, there's a chance that neither one of you will make it,'" Craft recalled.

Aleina Craft was delivered early, but safely, by an emergency c-section.

Two months later, Craft was back in the cardiac ICU. Her heart was now pumping at 10-15% capacity.

She was transferred to Piedmont Atlanta Hospital where heart transplant surgeon Dr. Ezequiel Molina and his team took over her care.

Molina is the surgical director of Advanced Heart Failure, Transplant, and Mechanical Circulatory Support (MCS) at Piedmont Heart Institute.

"Jasmine came to us very sick," Dr. Molina said. "But, she got incredibly sicker throughout the process of waiting for a heart transplant."

Dr. Molina says Jasmine was experiencing a type of heart failure known as postpartum cardiomyopathy.  

Either during or right after her pregnancy, he says, her immune system developed antibodies that were now attacking her heart.

"Jasmine probably didn't feel too many symptoms originally because she's very young," Molina said. "Young patients have a lot of reserve and, on the outside, they look fine."

But, Craft was now critically ill. Her heart was shutting down.

Piedmont doctors inserted a tiny balloon heart pump, then placed her on a heart-lung machine known as an ECMO, which is typically reserved for the most critical patients.

"Even on that kind of support, she became sicker and sicker," Dr. Molina said.

Without a new heart, soon, Molina feared, Craft would not survive much longer.

During her time at Piedmont, she was able to see and hold her newborn daughter just once before someone wheeled her outside the hospital.

"When I went in, she was right at two months," Craft said. "And, when I got out, she was for going on five months.  As a mom, you go through those thoughts of, ‘Will she know who I am, you know, when I get out?’"

In the end, Jasmine Craft waited just two and a half weeks for a donor heart.

"It was definitely a blessing," she said.

Today, Craft takes a daily medication that keepes her immune system from rejecting her new heart.

"I feel great," she told FOX 5. "I don't have any issues with the fluid overload, or having that feeling. I have no issues with shortness of breath."

Now, Jasmine Craft can focus on the one thing she lives for: being Aleina's mom.