Joey Lawrence: “I was scared for my baby girl’s life”
Dancing with the Stars 3 contestant Joey Lawrence was ecstatic to finally show off his beautiful newborn daughter, Liberty Grace, at an exclusive photoshoot with Life & Style. There, Joey opened up to the magazine about his wife Chandie’s precarious pregnancy and the joys of being a father again.
Six weeks after conceiving, Chandie was diagnosed with Rh disease, a blood disorder that could threaten a developing baby’s red blood cells, which store iron and distribute oxygen to the body. “We had to go to the specialist every 24 hours during the last two or three weeks of the pregnancy,” actor Joey told Life & Style. “We were so worried. We wanted to get Libby out so bad.” By March 4 — a month before Chandie’s due date — Libby was becoming lethargic because of rising red blood cell levels, so she’d have to be delivered prematurely. For the next five days, her first glimpses of the outside world were from the neonatal intensive care unit. “They handed her to me even before they cleaned her off,” Joey says about Libby, who weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces at birth. “I held her for a second, and then they took her from me and locked her in a tube.”
Thankfully, the 2-month-old is healthy now with her grateful parents and older sis, Charli, 3. “Our family of four is perfect,” Joey gushes to Life & Style. “We’d love to try for a boy, but unfortunately we’d have to deal with the Rh stuff every time. So if it’s not in the cards, then that’s okay. We’re blessed with two healthy girls.”
