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Like most working moms, Hilary Baude is usually on the go. She’s a kindergarten teacher, has two kids — Josie, 4, and Ellie, 10 — and is an avid marathon runner.
She also just completed the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii last month — a triathlon that involves swimming for 2.4 miles, cycling for 112 miles, and running 26.2 miles.
And Baude, 41, is doing it all with one kidney.
The first kidney donor to ever compete in the Ironman championship, Baude said she wanted to clear up misconceptions about kidney donation — and hopefully inspire others to consider organ donation.
“People perceive it as being debilitating, that after you donate you're limited in your physical activities, and that's absolutely not true,” the Waterford, Conn., mom tells PEOPLE exclusively.
Courtesy Hilary Baude
In fact, “my quality of life has completely improved since my kidney donation. So. it's impacted me in more positive ways than I could have ever imagined.”
Baude tells PEOPLE she was inspired to donate her kidney after she miscarried one of her twins in December 2012 after a long IVF journey. This caused the surviving twin, Ellie, to develop the skin condition Aplasia Cutis Congenita Type V, which the National Institute of Health says “results from temporary hypotension in the surviving twin at the time of fetal demise.”
Ellie was born in 2013, but apart from developing lesions due to her skin condition, Ellie also struggled with Atrial Septal Defect (a hole in her heart, as explained by the CDC) and Patent Ductus Arteriosus (an opening between two blood vessels, the Mayo Clinic says).
Both heart disorders required open heart surgery — and her skin condition required surgery on her legs.
Then, shortly after Ellie turned one, Baude’s husband, Jim, was diagnosed with prostate cancer at age 49.
“It would just seem like one thing after another,” Baude tells PEOPLE. “It felt like years of that desperate longing, just wishing someone could give us a cure and make it all better for us.”
Then, Baude tells PEOPLE she was home, watching TV during the Covid pandemic in 2020, and saw a story about a man’s search for a kidney.
Courtesy Hilary Baude
“It never occurred to me that I could donate to a stranger,” she tells PEOPLE. “But I feel like the timing was right.”
As Baude explains, “Oftentimes, when women lose a child through miscarriage, there is intense self-blame and shame. When I lost Grace, I immediately wondered what I could have done differently and why my body failed her.”
“Kidney donation allowed me to regain a faith and appreciation for the resiliency and strength of my body. My body was able to save the life of another person while still beautifully functioning for me. Simultaneously, I gained a greater appreciation of what my body could do rather than what it looked like.”
Before donating her kidney, Baude was paired with a mentor, Steve Wilson, who also had donated a kidney, to help her through the process.
As she explained to her mentor, “I've done marathons. I want to continue doing marathons. And I also want to try an Ironman in the future. And I'm really worried that this is going to impact my physical abilities.”
“And he was like, 'Well, actually, I'm an Ironman.' So it was the perfect mentorship."
Baude made her kidney donation in May 2021, and 16 months later, she completed her first Ironman competition in Maryland.
Baude hopes people will see her competing and realize that life after a kidney donation doesn’t have to change. In fact, she compared her recovery process to a Caesarian section, saying, “the benefits so outweighed the little bit of uncomfortableness that I had for a short period of time.”
Courtesy Hilary Baude
“You know, I can do all of my normal daily things. That could be gardening, that could be running, that could be, you know, taking your dogs for walks. You can go on to do exactly what it is you do after donating a kidney and saving a life.”
In fact, she’s teamed up with a fellow kidney donor, Matt Cavanaugh, for the 1K12M challenge — completing 12 marathons in a year with 1 kidney. After tackling the Marine Corps Marathon in late October, she’ll compete in the New York City marathon on November 5.
That’s right, she’s doing two marathons in one week — shortly after competing in the October Ironman World Championships, where Ellie and Jim cheered her on. (Both are in good health these days.)
And it was after that competition that Baude disproved another misconception about kidney donation.
“Questions that we get are like, 'Can you still drink alcohol?'” she tells PEOPLE.
After the Iron Man World Championships, she tells PEOPLE, “I was sitting there at a little bar by our hotel and I was just looking out over the exact swim course that I had just done 13 hours prior. It was just incredible to be like, 'Here I am, medal around my neck — and a beer in hand.”
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