COTA for Team Sofia

Our Story

Meet baby Sofia, an incredibly strong 1-year-old who was supposed to be born on her older brother’s birthday but chose her own date.

She smiled for the first time right after birth. We thought it was just a newborn twitch, but then she smiled again the next day, and the following day, and soon we realized: she’s just a very happy baby who loves life.

She loves blueberries, morning eggs, and dancing to music in her highchair. She adores her big brother. She lights up and squeaks every time she sees him. Her favorite word right now is “WOW!” whenever she discovers something new. We love hearing it in her little voice.

Sofia has the most beautiful blue eyes and the cutest gap between her two top teeth. She has long fingers and can already grab a baseball just right. We believe she’ll play sports someday when she gets the chance to grow up.

And more than anything, we really want her to grow up.

We want to see her become a fierce toddler, a moody teenager, a beautiful young woman, maybe a mother someday, a grandmother, and, just like her doctor said, an old lady.

“We all want Sofia to grow into an old lady,” he told us.

So that’s our goal.

That’s why we, as her parents, are being evaluated as potential living liver donors. It’s why we chose some of the best surgeons in the nation to perform her liver transplant at New York-Presbyterian, one of the few hospitals that performs living donor liver surgery laparoscopically, so we can be back on our feet as soon as possible to care for our kids.

But we cannot do it alone.

There will be costs surrounding the transplant: travel to New York, housing, time away from work, childcare for her older brother, an extensive post-op stay in NYC, follow-up trips, medications –  you know the list.

So we’re summoning the village. If there was ever a time to do it, it is now.

Please help us give Sofia the best chance at life. The kind of life where she can keep sharing that beautiful smile every day, use those long little fingers to play ball or music, discover a thousand more things that make her say “WOW,” and annoy her big brother at least once a day.

Sofia’s diagnosis: Sofia is a unique child – about 1 in 15,000 babies are born with biliary atresia. Her bile ducts did not develop normally and became blocked shortly after birth. When she was only a few months old, she underwent surgery that helped save her native liver for almost a year and, most importantly, gave her time to grow bigger and stronger for transplant. We hoped her liver would last her lifetime. It did the best it could, and now it’s time for our little girl to get a new one.

Thank you for being part of Sofia’s village.

Team Sofia 

The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation’s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA’s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.