Just Had to Share

From an e-mail we received this morning . . .

Hi Matt and Holly,

I am so elated to see that little Annabelle is doing well. I understand that the first few nights were pretty hectic. I don’t know if other parents have share that fact that this is very normal with newborns so hang in there, it should get better.

I was watching the Olympics tonight and Johnson&Johnson had a short ad about heavyweight Deontay Wilde. He is a boxer for in the Olympics. In this clip, he said that he had a daughter that was born with spina bifida and that if you could see her now, you would never know that she was born with spina bifida. So I immediately got on the internet and found some interesting pages.

On the Olympics bio, one of the paragraph goes:

A motivating force behind your jobs was your 3-year-old daughter, Naieya, who was born with spina bifida. How is she doing now?

Most kids with spina bifida are paralyzed from the waist down and a majority of them are in a wheelchair. But for her case I always tell people, "God has something for you to support you." And you can never tell that she has it. She has braces on her legs because she just had an operation on her legs but that's the only thing people ask me about. She's standing up well by herself and even taking multiple steps. I give her a couple more months and she'll have everything by herself. You look at my little girl now and you can never tell. She's the smartest little girl in the world, it's amazing. It makes me proud to say I'm a parent. She's the most beautiful thing in the world.

(read the two paragraphs after this on the website and if you look at the pictures on this web page, the 14th picture is his little girl.)

Other websites about him and his daughter

And Here

One of the paragraphs towards the bottom:

“But there are more important things to worry about now. His little girl, Naieya, is 2 and after many surgeries she can move around and play and do almost all the things the doctors said she never would. Deontay is not surprised. "I feel she's got a part of me," he said.”

Another Article Here

Shortly after she was born, she underwent a series of surgeries at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham for treatment of spina bifida, a congenital condition of the spinal cord.

She attends the University of Alabama RISE program for children with hearing, sight and motor skill impairments. Wilder said she has begun to walk and talk, despite the doctor’s early prognosis.

Some other stories about the man Here

Thank you!