CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A house full of love, is also a very full house!
Local mother Luphinia Digsby, just gave birth to her second set of twins.
She had her first set of twins when she was just 16.
Digsby managed to finish high school and college and so did her first two children.
“The first set has graduated college, my sons in grad school.”
She figured she was done raising her children.
And then she met and fell in love with John and the two decided they wanted a child together.
“I asked them to repeat what they said and he said yes there are two in there.”
She was having a second set of twins, 22 years after giving birth to the first set.
Soon the doctors would tell her something else about one of the babies.
“I was told that he wouldn’t make it. Every visit I went to it was he will not make it, he’s not destined to be here.
Baby John had a rare heart condition that doctors at Levine Children’s Hospital spotted while he was in the womb."
Dr. Paul Kirshbom is the Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at Levine and says, “This is unusual because his disease is so rare. There are reported cases in literature a couple of dozen maybe but it's something we don’t see very often.”
Doctors knew they would have to perform surgery and Digsby had an emergency c-section
“I heard a strong healthy baby boy just crying and when I heard that cry it was like he’s here, this far, we got this far.”
The babies father was in the delivery room "Then all of a sudden that’s when we got the flat-line.”
John survived – but didn’t have a lot of energy. His heart wasn’t pumping blood properly.
“He would just kind of lay around.”
When he was just 5 months old, doctors at Levine children’s hospital performed life-saving surgery.
“I thought everything was over at one time and then all of a sudden here comes a son and a little bonus with it.”
Mom and dad say the twins seem to know that John almost didn’t make it.
“He instantly turned and grabbed her hand and I felt like he was saying 'I'm here' I felt like it was him telling her 'it's us, I'm here' so every time I see it, it makes me feel good, I feel wonderful.”