Ayla Summer was born in December and, before she could even say “viral”, she already had half the world in love with her.
Cristina Vercher, 21, and Blaize Mucha, 20, met her after a C-section at Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia. The doctors never saw what happened coming. The ultrasound hadn’t detected anything, and the baby’s mouth was wider than normal. It’s called bilateral macrostomia, a condition so rare that the doctor had never seen a case. Hours passed before someone gave them an answer, and Cristina could think of only one thing: where had she gone wrong? The specialists assured her it wasn’t her fault.
Months later, they opened a TikTok account to look for answers and, without meaning to, found a community. Today, they have more than 118,000 followers, and a single video of Ayla in her flower dress has surpassed 47 million views. Some comments were cruel, but hundreds of mothers wrote to tell them they were going through something similar. “We’re not going to stop sharing our favorite memories; we’re very proud”, says Cristina.
