Olivia Baessler might still be learning how to walk, but the 15-month-old is already a trailblazer after becoming the first person in Canada to receive a new type of throat surgery that uses magnets.

The Brandon, Man. toddler was born six weeks premature with her esophagus connected to her lung airways instead of to her stomach -- a birth defect called esophageal atresia that affects about 50 to 75 babies a year in Canada.

“It’s a rare disease,” Dr. Richard Keijzer, a pediatric surgeon and scientist at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba told CTV Winnipeg. “As a group here in Winnipeg, we see about three to five patients a year."

Because the condition prevents food from entering the stomach, it requires urgent surgery to correct.

Because of Olivia’s prematurity, surgery to connect her esophagus to her stomach had to be performed in stages. But a few months after the surgeries, the new connection had become completely blocked, requiring a further procedure.

"If she was to have this surgery again, it would have been another invasive surgery,” Olivia’s mother, Crystal Malchuk, told CTV Winnipeg. “And the first time, she didn't handle it so well."

But Dr. Keijzer had another idea: a new, less invasive procedure pioneered in the United States called magnetic compression.

The procedure involves inserting two catheters with powerful magnets on them on either end of the disconnected esophagus. Over several days, the magnets force the two ends of the esophagus together, which eventually fuse and create a new connection, allowing the magnets to then be removed.

There was only one small problem, Dr. Keijzer says: it had never been done in Canada.

The procedure had only been performed about a dozen times in the U.S., but Olivia became the first Canadian patient to have it. She underwent surgery just before Christmas after all necessary approvals were granted.

"After the connection was established, she was able to go home two days later,” Dr. Keijzer said.

Although Olivia was a first, Dr. Keijzer says that she won’t be the last Canadian to receive this groundbreaking treatment.

Since the procedure, Malchuk said she’s proud her daughter helped bring a new surgical technique to Canada.

“It was a blessing in disguise,” Malchuk said. “It was sad she got so sick again, but it was the reason the surgery got brought to Canada."

As for Olivia, she’s been doing great, her mother says.

“She's happy and lively and smiles 24 hours a day.”

With a report from CTV Winnipeg’s Jon Hendricks