A little girl from Texas who was removed from the womb at 23 weeks for surgery and then placed back in her mother’s womb is being called nothing short of a miracle.
Early in her pregnancy, Margaret Boemer received some scary news about her baby.
“They saw something on the scan, and the doctor came in and told us that there was something seriously wrong with our baby and that she had a sacrococcygeal teratoma,” Boemer said in an interview shared by Texas Children’s Hospital. “And it was very shocking and scary, because we didn’t know what that long word meant or what diagnosis that would bring.”
Sacrococcygeal teratoma is a tumor that develops before birth and grows from a baby’s tailbone, CNN reported.
Surgeon Darrell Cass said that when babies are born with SCT, it is almost always fixable. When they see it on a fetus, it is a much more serious matter.
A checkup at 23 weeks revealed that baby Lynlee was going into heart failure. There was no choice left but to try fetal surgery.
“We knew that if we didn’t choose the option of emergency surgery that night, that within a day or so she would pass,” said Boemer.
During the surgery, Lynlee was removed from her mother’s womb, the tumor was removed from her spine, then she was placed back in her mother’s womb.
She remained there until she was born via C-section at a healthy 36 weeks.
“It was her second birth basically,” Boemer said. “It was a relief to finally see her and to see that she had made it through after the open fetal surgery her heart had time to heal while I was still pregnant with her so she has no heart issues now and is just doing amazing.”
Culled from wkrn.com