A baby girl in the US was
successfully ‘born’ for the second time, after being taken out of her mother’s
womb for 20 minutes at 23 weeks of pregnancy for a groundbreaking surgery to
save her life. The baby was delivered by C section after 12 weeks. Margaret
Boemer, from the US, was 16 weeks pregnant when she was told that her baby had
a sacrococcygeal teratoma – a tumour grows from the baby’s tailbone before
birth. This is the most common tumour doctors see in a newborn. Even though it’s
the most common they see, it was still a pretty rare. According to doctor, the
tumour feeds on blood flow from the baby, competing with the baby as they both
are trying to grow. In some instances, the tumour wins and the heart just can’t
keep up and the heart goes into failure and the baby dies. 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. An emergency surgery was performed at 23 weeks and 5 days of
pregnancy, when the tumour was nearly larger than the foetus. The tumour was so
large a huge incision was needed to reach it, so the baby had to be taken out
of the womb. The team successfully removed the bulk of the tumour. When they
finished their operation, the surgeon placed the baby back inside the womb and
sewed her mother’s uterus shut. After another 12 weeks Lynlee Hope was born for
the second time via C-section in June this year.
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