An Uber driver offered more than her driving skills after a distraught passenger and mother tearfully recounted how her newborn son had been born with birth defects.
The kindhearted driver then proceeds to buy the passenger baby clothes to help out.
Nikki Ihus, from Kansas City, Missouri, had received the painful news that her son would be born with a rare birth defect. She was advised to give birth at a hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida so that her son could be given the proper care.
Watch to find out more of this heartwarming story.
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And so baby John Henry was born in September with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH), which means there is a genetic defect in the diaphragm that causes very small lungs.
As fate would have it, two weeks ago Nikki had to go out to buy more baby clothes after realizing that she didn’t have enough and had booked an Uber with Belinda Smith as the driver. A tearful Nikki couldn’t help but pour out her troubles to Belinda, who decided to respond in a wonderful way.
Nikki explained what CDH was: “It’s a hole in the diaphragm that allows the organ in the abdomen to move into the chest cavity and causes really small lungs because it limits the space for them to grow,” adding that she was so shocked because she found out only weeks before delivering the baby.
“The nurses actually told me not to Google anything when I found out because they knew the survival rates were not very good,” she added.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh gosh, this is her first child and she is having to go through all this.’ It’s so sad,” Belinda, from Florida, told Fox News.
“I was having a bad day,” Nikki agreed.
On the day he was born, doctors performed a ‘terrifying’ procedure on John Henry that involved putting him on his stomach for the first time. He also had to learn to breathe without the help of a machine.
Nikki’s mom had been with her daughter in Florida since August. But on that particular day, she was out of town and that’s why Nikki hired an Uber to pass by at a nearby store where the baby clothes were on sale.
That’s how Nikki met Belinda and made a friend for life.
“I was kind of explaining what was going on that day,” she said. “And I let her know my mom was out of town and what had happened to the machine.”
Once they arrived at their destination, Belinda decided to join Nikki because the distraught mother shouldn’t be by herself.
It shocked Nikki but she appreciated the gesture nevertheless.
“So we just started picking out baby clothes. It was really fun,” Nikki said.
Once they reached the cashier, Belinda paid for everything and handed Nikki a “huge bag of clothes.”
“She gave me a hug and started to cry,” Belinda, who has been an Uber driver for three months, said of Nikki’s reaction.
“I wanted to cry. Honestly, I was just happy to do something nice for her because she was having a rough day.”
Nikki added: “It was amazing, I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ I didn’t expect anything at all. I just needed to tell someone what was going on, and there she is. She just showed up and offered to buy clothing. It was amazing.
“It definitely brightened my day because I was definitely not in the mood to go shopping, and she made it fun.”
Belinda stopped by the hospital a few days later to finally meet John Henry.
“He’s so beautiful,” Belinda said, adding that he’ll surely be running circles around his mom in no time.
“He’s going to be her superhero,” she added.
Nikki updates John Henry’s progress through the donations website Caring Bridge.
Thankfully, Nikki most recently wrote that “John Henry seems to have been doing better” and that no new infections were detected in his urine or breathing tube. He will likely remain in the hospital for another three months.
One thing that keeps Nikki going is the thought of going on a trip to Disney World with her newfound friend Belinda.
“This is a lifetime friendship. We’re bonded, we are bound together,” Belinda noted. “I just really feel that a lot of people need to have a little more warmness in their hearts and stop being so caught up in everything and look at people around you because you never know what they are going through.”
Nikki agreed: “At least I know there are good people out there.”
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