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“I couldn’t believe that I was actually pregnant, and when the scan showed there were three heartbeats I nearly passed out!”

Louisiana resident Kandace Smith is the latest hero when it comes to putting the birth and care of her own children ahead of herself — as she, while suffering from cystic fibrosis, rejected abortion to have triplets. Because they didn’t believe she would survive, doctors told Smith she should have an abortion — destroying the lives of her three unborn children to save her own.

Because of the pressure a pregnancy puts on already-embattled lungs dealing with the medical condition, Mrs. Smith’s physicians told her they worried about her own life as a result of the high-risk pregnancy situation. But Mrs. Smith refused and went ahead to give birth to her three children, in what some reports say is a medical first. Ultimately Smith carried the children for 28 weeks before her lungs began failing and doctors delivered the children at Tulane- Lakeside Hospital.

“I couldn’t believe that I was actually pregnant, and when the scan showed there were three heartbeats I nearly passed out,” she told the London Daily Mail newspaper in a new interview. “I didn’t actually believe it was possible – and there were three babies in my womb.” The three identical girls are named Brooklyn, Savannah and Dakota.

The parents, Steven and Kandace, were able to bring the babies home in January of this year following the birth last October. None of the babies needed breathing assistance following the birth and, although they are all carrier of the gene for cystic fibrosis, none of them have the condition. “It has been the hardest fight of my life – but it has been worth every second. I would have died for my girls if I’d had to,” Mrs. Smith concluded.