At 25, just three months after giving birth to her daughter Sophia, Kellie Finlayson learned she had bowel cancer.

What initially appeared to mimic postpartum symptoms quickly became a stage 4 diagnosis after doctors discovered the cancer had spread, changing the course of her first year as a mother and setting her on a years-long path of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Now 30, Finlayson is living with metastatic cancer in her lungs while trying to protect the life she has built with Sophia, her husband Jeremy Finlayson and the supportive friends and family who helped carry them through the darkest moments.

Finlayson, a teacher, tells PEOPLE exclusively that, despite being aware that her disease is considered terminal, the diagnosis “wasn’t scary at all,” as she was more focused on caring for her infant at the time.

“I felt like I was just being robbed of my first year of motherhood, which obviously kind of sucks,” she says.

Kellie Finlayson and daughter, Sophia.Kellie Finlayson/Instagram
Looking back, Finlayson believes there were signs something was wrong long before she received answers.

She had experienced bowel changes for years, but because she was young and otherwise fit, the symptoms were easy to explain away. The overlap between bowel cancer symptoms and everyday discomforts women may experience made it even harder for her to recognize what was happening.

“It’s really hard to navigate what bowel cancer is because it’s so similar to just having a menstrual cycle, so it was really easy to just push away to the side and blame it on something else,” Finlayson admits.

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After Sophia was born, the symptoms continued, including bleeding, but Finlayson assumed they were part of the postpartum period. She had already spent years being reassured that she was young, healthy and unlikely to have anything serious, and she initially followed that logic rather than pushing for answers.

“Google said that that was quite normal, so I just let it happen. Well, I guess the doctors just thought I was hemorrhaging, so I just went with that too,” Finlayson recalls.

Eventually, she underwent a colonoscopy, and what doctors initially identified as stage 3 bowel cancer was upgraded to stage 4 within 48 hours after further scans showed the disease had spread.

The diagnosis came with an immediate barrage of procedures and decisions, including surgery that left her with a temporary colostomy and months of intensive treatment.

Kellie Finlayson.Kellie Finlayson/Instagram
Finlayson’s first year with Sophia, however, became almost unrecognizable from the motherhood she had imagined.

As a new mother, she had to stop breastfeeding almost immediately, while nurses helped her express milk during surgery to prevent complications. At one point, Finlayson spent 12 days in intensive care, separated from her daughter and much of her family because of COVID restrictions.

“I wasn’t able to parent at all, essentially. If she would cry, I’d just hope that someone else would go to her. It was a really tough pill to swallow,” she shares. “I just felt like everything that I’d dreamt of was taken from me.”

Still, Finlayson remains deeply aware of what her mother sacrificed during those months, leaving her own job and spending long stretches away from her husband to help care for Sophia.

“[My mother] became Sophia’s carer essentially. She was her mom for the first easily nine months, maybe longer,” Finlayson reveals. “That’s worked out well, but she’s probably been the one that’s lost the most through it, which obviously she wouldn’t question that twice. She would always do that. She’s a mom, I get it now, obviously.”

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Kellie Finlayson.Kellie Finlayson/Instagram
As treatment progressed, Finlayson underwent radiation, surgery and nearly 80 rounds of chemotherapy.

“I got everything that I could cut out, and I also did really intense, aggressive chemotherapy for a while there. I was always told basically that I’d probably be living with it forever,” she shares. “It’s not an incurable disease, but it was quite widespread, and without killing every other organ, it was going to be quite hard to kill every little last bit of cancer.”

For a time, scans showed no active tumors, but the cancer eventually returned in her lungs. In June 2026, she also underwent a lung wedge resection, a surgery to remove small, cancerous sections of her lung.

Her oncologist has also taken her quality of life into account, working with her to find a treatment approach that allows her to remain present for Sophia rather than pursuing treatment that overwhelms her ability to live.

“Essentially, it’s not attacking the cancer aggressively, but it’s also giving me that peace of mind that it’s also not growing and spreading,” Finlayson explains.

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While she is still “living with” the cancer in her lungs, that approach has kept her disease remarkably “stable.” Finlayson says there has been little to no change since August 2023 and the disease hasn’t spread elsewhere — something she describes as unusual for her type of cancer. Still, she goes in for checkups every three weeks, takes an oral chemotherapy tablet daily and gets regular CT scans.

She deals with the daily effects of treatment and describes her physical reality as something she has simply learned to live with.

“It’s just my new normal. It’s similar to being 38 weeks pregnant, without the reward, obviously. It’s like insomnia, morning sickness, but all-day sickness,” she says. “Feeling heavy, always having that afternoon drop. It’s just literally comparable to being 38 weeks pregnant knowing that there’s going to be no baby.”

Kellie Finlayson and family.Kellie Finlayson/Instagram
Although Finlayson knows stage 4 cancer can ultimately be fatal, she has resisted allowing that possibility to become the center of her life.

She was even deliberately shielded from her initial prognosis because her surgeon understood that she might allow a number to define what she believed was possible. “If he’d given me a prognosis, I’d probably live to that,” Finlayson admits. “So I never got my prognosis until just over 18 months later.”

When she eventually learned the initial prognosis had been 12 months, Finlayson had “already outlived it.” Four years later, she continues to approach her illness with the same refusal to surrender her present to an uncertain future.

“You can live with it for a really long time, but nine times out of 10, that’s what’s going to take you,” Finlayson reveals. “But it doesn’t bother me at all. Obviously, I don’t live like I’m terminally ill.”

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Kellie Finlayson and family.Kellie Finlayson/Instagram
For Finlayson, life today means focusing less on how much time she may have left and more on how she spends that time with Sophia. She doesn’t want cancer to turn her daughter’s childhood into a series of preparations for an absence; instead, she wants to be there to experience it with her.

“I think until I get given, ‘You’ve got two weeks,’ I won’t even think about it,” Finlayson says. “I just don’t see it happening, which is so naive, but I just don’t see it happening to me.”

And as Sophia grows, Finlayson hopes she will one day understand just how much of their life was documented and preserved for her on social media — not as a record of illness, but as a record of a mother determined to be present.

“[There is] going to be so many things for her to look back on, and I think that that’s what I’m most proud of,” Finlayson tells PEOPLE.