Meet The Baby That Was Born Twice
Margaret Boemer went for a routine ultrasound 16 weeks into her pregnancy with her third child and She quickly found out that things were far from routine.
“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,” the Plano, Texas, mom 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.”
“This is the most common tumor we see in a newborn,” said Dr. Darrell Cass, co-director of Texas Children’s Fetal Center and associate professor of surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College Medicine.“Even though it’s the most common we see, it’s still pretty rare.”Found more often in girls than boys, this tumor occurs in one out of every 35,000 births.
Unfortunately, this was not the first bad news of Boemer’s pregnancy. Originally, she had been pregnant with twins, but lost one of the babies before her second trimester.It was a shock at 16 weeks to learn of her daughter’s rare birth defect.“Some of these tumors can be very well-tolerated, so the fetus has it and can get born with it and we can take it out after the baby’s born,” said Cass. “But about half of the time, they cause problems for the fetus and it’s usually causing problems because of a blood flow problem.”Cass explained that the tumor is trying to grow by sucking blood flow from the baby, yet the baby is also trying to grow, too “so it becomes a competition.”“And in some instances, the tumor wins and the heart just can’t keep up and the heart goes into failure and the baby dies,” said Cass.With a large tumor stealing the blood supply, Boemer’s fetus was becoming more ill each day, doctors explained to the expectant mother. Something had to be done.
“The part on the fetus we do very, very quickly,” said Cass. “It’s only 20 minutes or so on the actual fetus.” Most of the time is spent opening the uterus, which he described as “a big muscle lined with membranes.”
“We don’t want the mom’s health to be jeopardized,” said Cass, who explained they work carefully, both making the incision and sewing it up in order “to make that uterus be as sealed and as water tight as possible.”
Still, Cass said, the tumor in this case was so large a “huge” incision was needed to get to it, so it ended up that the baby was “hanging out in the air. Essentially, the fetus is outside, like completely out, all the amniotic fluid falls out, it’s actually fairly dramatic.”During the surgery, LynLee’s heart slowed down to an incredibly low rate. “It basically stopped,” said Cass. He credits the heart specialist, a key member of the team, for giving the right medication and transfusing the right amount of fluid, allowing the surgeons to continue their work.
“It’s kind of a miracle you’re able to open the uterus like that and seal it all back and the whole thing works,” said Cass.
“At eight days old, she had more surgery, and they were able to remove the rest of the tumor,” explained Boemer.