30-year-old Alyssa Higgins of Rockland County, NY, got the surprise of her life in the form of a positive pregnancy test.
What makes her news so surprising is the fact that Alyssa is confined to a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury sustained at birth.
Speaking to GMA, Alyssa said “I didn’t even know if I could get pregnant with a spinal cord injury, but also because I have one ovary. The ovary thing made it get into my head more when I thought I couldn’t get pregnant. But it was always a possible thing.”
Due to complications experienced at birth, Alyssa suffered a severe injury to the top of her spinal cord between her C1-C2 vertebrae. As a result, she was unable to breath on her own and was immediately placed in an incubator.
A year and a half later at 18 months old, Alyssa finally started gaining movement in her fingers. Her injury largely affected the left side of her body, preventing her from moving without assistance.

Despite her disability, Alyssa said she had a rich childhood filled with supportive friends and family who treated her like anyone else. Alyssa met her husband, 30-year-old Jimmy, online in 2013. The two had an instant connection and enjoyed conversing and getting to know each other. But it wasn’t until their first official in-person date that Jimmy became aware of Alyssa’s disability.
Her wheelchair didn’t scare Jimmy away, and the two spent the next 4 years getting to know each other and eventually falling in love. Engaged in 2017 and married in 2019, the two immediately began trying to build their family.
Besides having only one ovary, Alyssa’s doctor couldn’t find a reason why the newlyweds wouldn’t be able to conceive. There would be other potential complications that could arise due to Alyssa’s disability, but getting pregnant shouldn’t be one of them.

Even with this optimistic perspective, many of the couple’s friends and family were concerned about how Alyssa’s body would handle a pregnancy, assuming she became pregnant at all.

So when Alyssa did become pregnant, the couple was both shocked and overjoyed. Alyssa decided to surprise her husband with the incredible news with a pregnancy reveal which she captured in photos and shared to her Instagram account: 𝙰𝚕𝚢𝚜𝚜𝚊 𝙷𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚜 on Instagram: “How I told my husband (Jimmy) he was going to be a dad 🎉 SLIDE OVER TO THE LAST PICTURE!!!”

“I had no idea what to say,” Jimmy told “Good Morning America.” “I just turned around and my jaw dropped.”

Baby boy Higgins is due to join the family in May. When asked if she was nervous about going through pregnancy, Alyssa said “I don’t have any fears in general. I’ve been through so much that it’s like, ‘let’s bring it.’ There was no fear, I was excited.”

Jimmy and Alyssa are documenting the pregnancy on Instagram @wheel.life.in.the.wheel.world, where she hopes to remove some of the stigma surrounding people with her type of spinal cord injury.