A little after 11 a.m. on Friday, 30-year-old Hallie Flores of Evergreen enters the neonatal intensive care unit at Kalispell Regional Medical Center bringing an upbeat energy into the quiet, dimly lit room.

She lifts her hands at the sight of her daughter Isley, who is resting and stretching out her arms in an infant incubator in a corner of the room.

“Hello there, munchkin,” Hallie coos, opening the incubator’s circular doors. She slips her hands inside, takes Isley’s temperature and changes her diaper.

Afterward, she lifts open the incubator hood, picks up her baby and sits down in a rocking chair to feed her. Born about seven weeks prematurely on Oct. 4 weighing 3 pounds, 8 ounces, Isley is the newest addition to the Flores family, which includes big brothers 8-year-old Kaleb Quimby and 2-year-old Mclain Flores, and Hallie’s husband Sean.

“We expected she would be early but not this early,” Hallie said holding a bottle of donor breast milk to Isley who sleepily opens her eyes and looks around.

While the scene may seem ordinary enough — the people in it are quite extraordinary. Hallie is one in 3,000 women to be diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant.

She was four months pregnant with Isley when she was diagnosed on June 7 — just three days shy of her 30th birthday — with stage 2 triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma.

“The triple negative means there are no hormonal triggers to my cancer. So a lot of cancers have a hormone trigger like estrogen or progesterone. You can shut down that hormone to slow the cancer, mine doesn’t have that. Mine’s a very aggressive type of breast cancer,” Hallie said.

Despite having no family history of cancer, no genetic mutations and before even getting a diagnosis — when her husband discovered the lump in her breast, Hallie’s intuition was cancer —she decided to give her notice at work.

“I said I need to be home with the kids. It was just a feeling I couldn’t get rid of. I put in my two weeks and my last day was actually the day we had the ultrasound on the lump,” Hallie said. “About four days later my OB/GYN called me [and said], ‘Hallie...’”

Hallie didn’t need to hear more. She told her doctors, “OK, it’s fine. Let’s get me with an oncologist, and she said, ‘Do you even want to hear what it is?’ And I said, ‘I know it’s cancer.’

“Something was just off and I just knew. I knew. I didn’t need them to tell me it was cancer.”

Being pregnant complicated treatment. She held off on surgery until after giving birth because of concerns that anesthesia could be fatal to her baby. As an alternative she began an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy in powerful doses.

“We knew she was going to be small and we knew she was going to be early, but there is no research that suggests —” Hailey said pausing to talk to her baby, “Hi, smiles!” before finishing her sentence, “— that she was harmed in any way. It’s kind of amazing.”

Kalispell Regional Medical Center Neonatologist Kristin Veneman said that recent studies show, “Beyond prematurity and low birth weight there’s no effect on the womb” from chemotherapy. “They are exposed to it, but no harmful effects.”

This is quite a difference from medical recommendations of the past, which would have been to delay chemotherapy until after giving birth or have an abortion and start treatment right away according to Veneman.

Hallie said her tumor was gone after four weeks of starting chemotherapy and six weeks after her diagnosis.

“I still have two treatments of chemo. I’ll be done Oct. 26,” Hallie said,

but she’s holding off on celebrating just yet until after she is done with surgery — a double mastectomy and reconstruction.

Right now, she said she is lucky the chemotherapy has had no serious side effects such as weight loss, nausea or vomiting while she was pregnant or after the delivery.

“While pregnant I continued to gain [weight], not as much as I should, but we weren’t losing, which was key,” Hallie said.

Her biggest side effect was fatigue, but that’s also possibly a side effect of chasing two kids around, intensive chemotherapy while pregnant and taking a college course online — just one class away from completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

“So tired was an understatement,” Hallie said, laughing.

Her hair is already starting to grow back.

“My husband is going to take one picture of her and I together to see who grows hair faster,” Hallie said. “We ended up shaving my head July 4 because we went out on my parent’s boat and the front quarter section was windswept away — totally gone in the front. There was a point where I wouldn’t wash or brush my hair because it was falling out in clumps.”

Veneman said she believes this is the first case of a mother with cancer giving birth to a baby at Kalispell Regional.

Since the hospital hired Maternal Fetal Specialist Debra Guinn in June in addition to opening the Montana Perinatal Center, Veneman anticipates there will be more high-risk pregnancies, such as Hallie’s, receiving care at the hospital

“We’ve told mom both she and Isley are strong fighters, that’s for sure. There was a lot of emotion when Isley was born,” Kristin said. “It was an honor to be there for that.”

There is a strong will within Hallie to overcome life’s obstacles and the fighting will of a mother to survive for her family.

“My key phrase is I’ve got cancer’s ass in a blender and it’s on puree,” Hallie said with a hearty laugh. “And every single day is a roller coaster. You will have good days and you will have bad days. You just go with it. You do what you have to do.”

“I think it was my attitude toward it all and my body knowing what we needed to do. Having two other kids I still needed to take care of them and take care of myself and make sure she was good and she was taken care of too — that was a really large part of it,” Hallie said patting Isley’s back to encourage a burp.

“She’s tiny and she looks frail, but this little girl is one hell of a fighter. And in all honesty I’d love to say she gets it from me, but she gets it from my mom. My mom’s had two kidney transplants and she is my superhero.”

The hardest challenge Hallie has had to face so far is not being able to take Isley home. Isley will likely stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit for at least four weeks till around the time of her original due date when it is shown that she can maintain a certain weight and temperature.

“She runs the show completely,” Hallie said.

For now, Hallie and Sean visit regularly. From home, their other two children can watch their sister on a computer or smart phone from a camera placed over her incubator.

Hallie said getting cancer has been a humbling experience and the little things such as waking up next to her husband, taking her children to the park or shopping for groceries makes her thankful every day.

“I’ve had a lot of support from family, from the community mentally, emotionally and monetarily,” Hallie said.

“As much as we’ve been through, we’ve got this,” Hallie said with a determined smile.

Donations toward medical and living expenses while Hallie undergoes treatment and recovery may be made at www.gofundme.com/floresrecovery.

Hilary Matheson is a reporter for The Daily Inter Lake. She may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.