Bucket List baby Avery dies

Little Avery Lynn Canahuati, the 5-month-old girl with Spinal Muscular Atrophy who captured everyone's hearts on the Internet for her bucket list, died yesterday, her family announced on her blog.

It's so sad that this precious baby left this world suddenly. On April 6th, her Doctors told her parents that she had 18 months to live so what happened?? Yesterday was April 30th.

Baby Avery's lung collapsed yesterday afternoon and she went into cardiac arrest, I immediately performed CPR on her and was able to bring her back to life, but only for a brief period of time before she passed away shortly after arriving at the hospital," her father, Michael Canahauati wrote in an update on her blog, Avery's Bucket List. Babies with severe types of SMA have difficulty regulating their breath and are especially vulnerable to respiratory complications.

"Avery's passing this quickly came as a complete shock to all of us, as she had just been given a thumbs up at her last doctor's appointment only three days ago," Mike Canahauati wrote in a blog post today. "While we were aware of the severity of her diagnosis, we never lost hope for Avery."

Her father wrote that the disease never took away Avery's smile and he shared a photo of Avery smiling before she was rushed to the hospital on Monday.

Baby Avery with her parents Laura and Michael

In her final post, written by her father, Avery writes: "When I started writing my blog, I thought I'd only be speaking to my closest friends and family members. Little did I know soooooooo many people would care about me and while I'm flattered to have so many people who love me, I hope they will also take time to love and care about all of my friends out there with SMA."

To cherish every moment with their daughter, the Canahuatis, from Bellaire, Tex., created "Avery's Bucket List," a sweet and joyful blog written from Avery's perspective, where they chronicle her world and track their family adventures, checking things off from the bucket list as they go.

Recently, Avery threw out the first pitch at a minor league baseball game in Houston, got a tattoo, a driver's license and had her first kiss with a cute little boy.

One of the things on her bucket list was to raise $1million for kids with SMA, so far they have raised $365,000 which her parents said they would use to help babies with SMA.

Written in Avery's voice and infused with humor, the blog attracted millions of views online - from as far away as Malaysia, Hong Kong and Germany - as her story and message was shared through the SMA community, on Facebook and other social networking sites.

May her beautiful soul rest in peace..Amen!!