While pregnant with her second child, Shamiere Schwahn noticed something was off. She experienced issues with her hands and arms, along with hip pain that was so bad, Schwahn said that she “sometimes ..
. couldn't even stand up and walk to the bathroom.” She also noticed heartburn, along with “weird feelings in (her) chest.
” The symptoms she experienced, Schwahn said, were assumed to be because of her pregnancy. It wasn’t until after her daughter’s birth in February 2001 that things became clearer. “When she came out, her father jokingly said (that) she (looked) like baby Yoda, from ‘Star Wars,’” said Schwahn.
“You know how Yoda's eyes are kind of big? Her eyes were swollen like that.” Schwahn’s daughter’s eyes were so swollen that they would “constantly flip over” with any “yawn, cry, or stretch.” She also had an irregular heart rhythm and the front of her face was noticeably lighter than the rest of her body.
ADVERTISEMENT Schwahn took her daughter to a pediatric cardiologist to look into the irregular heart rhythm, but the lighter part of her daughter’s face wasn’t something that she was concerned about. “As a Black child, when you're born, your pigmentation isn't really prominent. And so as you age, you get darker and darker,” said Schwahn.
But the lighter part of her daughter’s face never darkened to match her overall skin tone – instead, it started looking redder and inflamed, which led Schwahn to take her daughter to a ped.
