After mom's cancer, baby born healthy: 'She's perfect'

MINNEAPOLIS — For the first time in the three weeks since her daughter was born, Lisa Peterson Bender might actually get more than two hours of sleep.

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Propped on her back in a hospital bed, with an IV line pumping a cocktail of anti-cancer drugs into her veins, the 32-year-old Minneapolis mother may as well rest, says Amy Graham, a registered nurse at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota.
“Who would have thought coming to chemo would be a break for you?” Graham teases after sliding the needle into Lisa’s left hand.
It’s a joke, of course, a way to lighten the seriousness of the moment. There’s nothing restful about breast cancer treatment, especially for Lisa, who already has endured surgery and chemotherapy and eight months of anxiety wondering whether fighting the disease would endanger her unborn child. She was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer 11 weeks into her first pregnancy. Msnbc.com

first reported on her in March

, before her baby was born.
She had four chemotherapy infusions during her second trimester, but stopped the drug treatment in December in order to allow the baby to thrive and grow.
“I didn’t even realize how stressed out I was during my pregnancy until now,” says Lisa, who last week launched a new, more aggressive course of cancer treatment aimed at eradicating the disease entirely.

Carissa Ray
 / 
msnbc.com


Lisa Bender holds her newborn daughter, Alice Virginia, in her Minneapolis, Minn., home hours before beginning an aggressive series of chemotherapy treatments, followed by radiation. Bender was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer when she was 11 weeks pregnant.

For now, however, the worst of the worry is over. Her daughter, Alice Virginia â€" named after a favorite aunt and a grandmother â€" arrived on March 13, four days before her due date. She weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces and was 19 ¾ inches long, with dark hair, her grandfather’s nose â€" and a clear bill of health, doctors confirmed.

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