Parents Of Girl With Heart Defect Meet Child Who Inspired Hope

NEW YORK, NY — Marie Dasaro and her fiance, Lou Campanella, were overjoyed when they found out they were having a baby girl. But the Brooklyn couple wasn't sure where to turn when they learned their unborn child had a rare congenital heart defect.

Their daughter, Hope, was diagnosed in utero with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and double outlet right ventricle, meaning the left side of her heart wasn't forming correctly and couldn't properly pump blood through her body. Doctors told the parents the girl had only a 50 to 70 percent chance of living to age 18, Dasaro said on NBC's "Today" Thursday.

"When somebody says something like that to you, it's numbing," Dasaro said.

But it turned out the pair wasn't alone. After some searching online, they learned about Jack Foley, a now-6-year-old boy born with the same heart defect who survived three heart surgeries by the time he turned 3.

Dasaro and Campanella exchanged online messages with Jack's mom, Lauren Kiefer-Foley, and drew inspiration from the family's story as Hope underwent two open-heart surgeries of her own in her first year of life. Jack, nicknamed "Super Jack," was treated at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Washington Heights, where Hope was born in January 2017.

The two families met in person for the first time in a "Today" segment that aired Wednesday morning. They got another special surprise when host Sheinelle Jones told them the American Heart Association has created the Hope and Jack Fund to support congenital heart defect research. A donor seeded the fund with $100,000, Jones said.

"There is no cure. That's why we need research," Kiefer-Foley told Jones. "We need to know and we need to be able to help him and Hope in their next stages in life, because they deserve to live a full life."

Dasaro dressed Hope in a "Supergirl" costume for her first birthday party. Eventually she'll need a third surgery, but for now, she's an active little girl looking ahead to her future.

"Her name is a reminder of our motto for her life," Dasaro told "Today." "There are so many different outcomes, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but we're going to just always hope for the best and enjoy every single day that we have with her."

Watch Hope's full story below via "Today."

(Lead image: Marie Dasaro and Lou Campanella pose with Hope at her 1st birthday party. Photo courtesy of New York-Presbyterian)