{"id":223866,"date":"2020-05-19T14:04:31","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T19:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=223866"},"modified":"2020-05-18T22:53:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T03:53:00","slug":"kidney-disease-pregnant-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/kidney-disease-pregnant-father\/","title":{"rendered":"Kidney disease kept her from becoming pregnant – until her father saved her life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When she was a teenager, Angela Retchless was told she should never become pregnant. But thanks to an incredible gift from her dad, she was able to have the family she had always dreamed of.<\/p>\n

Diagnosed with kidney disease at the age of nine, a doctor gave her devastating news as a teenager: it would be too dangerous for her to ever have a child. “I was only 16, but I\u2019d always imagined that one day I\u2019d be a mother,” she wrote for That’s Life!<\/a>, an Australian magazine. “Glancing over at my mum, Julie, I could tell she was heartbroken for me too.” With her diagnosis, Retchless was told that her kidney function would continue to worsen until she would need to go on dialysis, and eventually, need a transplant. Her father, Leon, promised that he would give her one of his.<\/p>\n

At 23, Retchless said she met her future husband Luke and had to break the news to him that she couldn’t have children<\/a>; though she said he took it well, she knew deep down he wanted a family as she did. And after getting married, she had to deal with the pain of constant questions from people wanting to know when they would have kids. At first, Retchless thought her only option was IVF.<\/p>\n

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