Kennita Perry awoke from brain surgery longing to hold her baby daughter. Two hours later, she had forgotten about eight-month-old Aurora completely.

“The surgery to repair a blocked artery in my brain went really well but the blood flow in my brain was trying to rework itself,” she said.

“Memory loss happens in about two per cent of patients, and I’ve always been one of those two-percenters.”

She kept looking at the photo of the baby on her phone, and asking who it was.

“I knew I should know the baby,” she said. “My mother would say, ‘That is your baby’.”

She spent days saying Aurora’s name without feeling a connection before something finally triggered in her brain and she remembered.

An agonising week passed before she was able to see her daughter. Doctors kept her in intensive care as they struggled to get her blood pressure under control.

“They brought Aurora to me, and my blood pressure went right down,” said Ms Perry. “It was amazing. I was released from the hospital after 12 days and flew home a week later.”

Ms Perry feels she owes her life to little Aurora.

The 42-year-old diabetic had high blood pressure and, in 2012, suffered a mild stroke. Doctors ordered her to take aspirin for the rest of her life after they discovered a carotid artery was 95 per cent blocked.

“I tried for so long to have a baby it would be easier to count how long I didn’t try,” said Ms Perry. “I’d given up for seven years. When I found out I was pregnant, I was shocked.”

Her obstetrician declared her a high-risk case, and sent her to Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital to deliver her child.

“If I hadn’t been pregnant they never would have discovered I had a [second] blockage running down the centre of my brain,” said Ms Perry. “Only one side of my brain has been pumping blood to both sides.”

Further testing and treatment had to be delayed until after Aurora was born on May 18 last year.

“When Aurora was placed on my chest it was an amazing feeling of love, wonderment and completeness,” she said. “We had been talking to each other for so long through music and stories and conversations, it was like we were continuing the relationship in person. I fell in love at first sight.”

She put off her surgery for several months so that she could spend some quality time with her child.

Ms Perry also made a video for Aurora shortly before her operation, on January 27.

In it, she told her about her family and how much she was loved.

“I wanted to tell her how she got her name,” the Bermuda College counsellor said. “Aurora means one who sees the beauty in things.

“I was quite happy to do it for her, but maybe I got a bit teary afterward. I didn’t think I would die, but there was a possibility I’d become a vegetable.

“So much has happened to me in my life, that it takes a lot to have me worried or panicked. I didn’t start to panic until very close to the surgery itself.”

Although now doing much better Ms Perry still has moments where she forgets the odd word, or loses her train of thought. Doctors predict that is unlikely to change.

So far, her prognosis is good. The experience has taught her to appreciate every single moment.

“I just sent off my images to have the neurosurgeon look at them,” she said. “I think I’m doing great considering I am up and walking.

“I used to have some problems getting up and going. I struggled with dizziness and couldn’t lift Aurora for about seven weeks. My partner has helped me a lot.

“Life is wonderful. Even when the baby screams, it makes no difference. She truly represents all the good things in life to me.”