Liver transplant couple welcomes baby

A Florida couple, both liver transplant recipients, celebrated the birth of a baby doctors believe is the first born to two such transplant recipients. Trine Engebretsen gave birth to a son, Andersen Thomas Labbe, July 21 at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center, The Miami Herald reported. Trine, 30, received a liver transplant in 1984 when she was just 2 years old, and her husband Ryan Labbe, also 30, received his transplant in May 2008, seven months before the couple married in Miami Beach. Labbe met Engebretsen via liverfamilies.net. The attraction was immediate, he said. "We already felt we had a connection and had a lot in common so it felt like a natural progression." One connection is transplant surgeon Dr. Andreas Tzakis, a director of the Miami Transplant Institute at UM/Jackson, who assisted at Engebretsen's liver transplant in 1984 in Pittsburgh and performed her husband's liver transplant in Miami. After the birth of the couple's baby, Engebretsen's donor family sent "a huge box of stuff for the baby" and are considered grandparents by the couple, Engebretsen said.