It’s like a tale from a medical drama set in the future, but for a very lucky US family, this story is actually entirely true.
Little LynLee Hope Boemer is the baby who was born twice. And can therefore probably be the first child in history to demand to have no less than two birthday parties when she gets older.
In an amazing medical feat, LynLee’s proper entry into the world came 12 weeks after she was temporarily taken out of her mother’s womb for a life-saving operation.
It was at a routine ultrasound at 16-weeks into her pregnancy that Texas-mum Margaret Boemer was told doctor’s had discovered a tumour in the tailbone of her unborn 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 told CNN. ‘And it was very shocking and scary, because we didn’t know what that long word meant or what diagnosis that would bring.’
Indeed, the prospects for the little girl featus were not good, and Dr. Darrell Cass, co-director of Texas Children’s Fetal Centre explains that the condition little LynLee was diagnosed with, while being the most common tumour found in newborns, is still very rare and only occur in every 30,000-70,000 births.
Surgery was the baby’s only option, and while this sometimes can be delayed until after the birth, in LynLee’s case the tumour was competing with the foetus for the body’s blood flow ‘so it become a case of “do or die” for the little girl.
“LynLee didn’t have much of a chance,” her mum explains. “At 23 weeks, the tumour was shutting her heart down and causing her to go into cardiac failure, so it was a choice of allowing the tumour to take over her body or giving her a chance at life.”
So at 24 weeks, the 1 lb, 3 oz foetus was taken out of her mother’s womb for a 20 minutes operation, then put back in and the uterus was sewn up again.
The entire operation took five hours, but Dr Cass explained: ‘The part on the foetus we do very, very quickly. It’s only 20 minutes or so on the actual fetus.”
After the surgery, mum Margaret was kept on bed-rest and her strong-willed little girl made it through another 12 weeks to nearly 36 weeks – which is considered full term – before being born for the second time via C-section.
Weighing in at 5 lb and 5 oz, little LynLee spent a few weeks in hospital following her birth before her delighted parents could take her home.
