Katie and Jeremy Larrison had a birthday party several Saturdays ago for their younger daughter, Mira, who turned a year old. That sounds routine enough, but very little about Mira’s life so far has been routine.

When Katie had an ultrasound during her pregnancy to learn the sex of her baby, she and her husband also learned that the child had three major heart defects. By the time she was eight months old, Mira had undergone five surgeries, the first of them when she was still in her mother’s womb to strengthen her heart for the operations that would be necessary as soon as she was delivered. The Larrisons live in Algonac, but they’ve spent so much time at University Hospital, which has one of the top fetal and pediatric cardiology programs in the nation, that they could probably register to vote in Ann Arbor.

Although she has survived longer and fared better than any other baby who has had that particular pre-natal procedure here, the Larrisons found out in December that Mira will need what the operations were intended to avoid: a heart transplant. Now she’s on a waiting list for a right-sized heart, and Katie admits that was a bit of a creepy feeling at first.

“What was eating me the most in the beginning is that some parent is tucking this child in tonight who won’t be here a month from now,” she says. “It could be a toddler, a pre-schooler, like my 4-year-old daughter, anyone Mira’s size and up to double her weight.”

The consolation, of course, is that the parent would have lost the child in any event, and such a posthumous act of kindness can give that loss some meaning, perhaps soften it, perhaps make it feel less than total. What better way to memorialize a child than to help another child live?

Mira’s condition, and the energy required to recover from her procedures, have slowed her development. She hasn’t begun to crawl yet, much less walk, but “each day is a blessing and a milestone,” says Katie. “The smallest thing that you wouldn’t think twice about with another baby, like her being able to lift her head up off the floor, is huge to us.”

And she’s as sharp as can be mentally. “She’s really watchful,” says her mom. “If I could explain her in one word, that would be it. She likes to watch the dog, and her sister. She likes to figure things out by watching. She’s definitely in tune with what’s around her, and that’s one of her biggest strong points. People looking at her who don’t know her wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with her. But she’s been sick since she was born. Hopefully, she’ll be feeling tons better after we get the transplant.”

Hopefully, some day, she’ll be riding bikes and pulling wagons and running around the neighborhood with the other kids. Her mom might even call her in to look at some souvenirs. “I saved some of her really high insurance statements,” says Katie, her eyes twinkling, “just to show her when she’s older.”

One reason that Mira was delivered by caesarean section was that the date of her birth had to be known in advance, so surgical teams could be standing by at several locations, depending on what kind of procedures her condition would necessitate.

“When I went into the hospital for the c-section, we didn’t know if we would be planning a funeral or a birthday,” Katie says. Although she and Jeremy have persevered from the beginning in a “one day at a time” approach, they could be forgiven, now that they know the answer, for finding this one day more special than the others.

Jeff Mortimer is a free-lance writer and editor who lives in Ann Arbor.