We Kissed Our Daughter Goodbye & Turned Off Her Life Support — Minutes Later, We Heard Her Voice

A couple had done everything they could to save their baby girl after being told three times that she wouldn’t make it. They felt their child draw her last breath, and then a miracle happened.

Parenthood is a gratifying stage in the human cycle, and for most, it is an immutable stage that brings out protective feelings and instincts. However, what happens when a parent has to watch helplessly as their child suffers?

The trauma is usually unforgettable — ask Lee and Francesca Moore-Williams, a couple who had to watch in horror as their daughter nearly died.

Francesca and Lee got married in 2012 and welcomed their first child, a boy named Bobby. Some years later, the two welcomed their second child, a daughter they named Bella, who was born healthy.

However, at two years old, her parents noticed that she was losing clumps of hair; then they observed she couldn’t sit straight in her chair without slumping. They got concerned and immediately took her to a hospital, but doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. They initially suspected asthma because Bella also suffered from chest infections at the time, so she was prescribed an inhaler.

Things were expected to get better, but three months later, while the family of four were on holiday in Gran Canaria, Bella’s health deteriorated. For the entire duration of the holiday, her energy levels dropped, and she clung desperately to her mother.

As soon as they returned home, the couple took Bella to see the family doctors, who referred them to Colchester Hospital in Essex. By noon, a test had been done, and it revealed her “depressed” legs had no movement.

Bella got weaker as doctors scrambled to find out what was wrong with her. Eventually, she started drifting in and out of consciousness because of a lack of energy. They put her on a ventilator and moved her to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

There she was admitted to intensive care and an MRI scan revealed severe abnormalities going on across both hemispheres of her brain. Experts told her parents that Bella most likely had a terminal Mitochondrial disease and were reportedly told three times that their daughter wouldn’t make it, so they sat by her side praying every day.

What Bella had was Biotinidase deficiency—a genetic disorder that affects only one in every 60,000 births—however, owing to its rareness, they weren’t expecting it. Fortunately, the hospital had dealt with a similar case six years before, so they knew what to do.

First came the...