Meet the baby who was born twice, courtesy a Nigerian doctor and his partner

Margaret Boemer went for a routine ultrasound 16 weeks into her pregnancy with her third child. The ultrasound revealed that there was something seriously wrong with the baby and that she had a sacrococcygeal teratoma.
“It was very shocking and scary, because we didn’t know what that long word meant or what diagnosis that would bring,” Bormer said. Sacrococcygeal teratoma is a tumor that develops before birth and grows from a baby’s coccyx, the tailbone.

 
“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.

With a large tumor stealing the blood supply, Boemer’s fetus was becoming more ill each day. Something had to be done. Although other doctors had advised her to terminate the pregnancy, 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, and his team told her about another possibility: fetal surgery.

She was 23 weeks and 5 days pregnant, when Cass performed the emergency fetal surgery. By this time, the tumor was nearly larger than the fetus. Cass and Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, his partner surgeon, operated for about five hours. .
The surgical team removed the bulk of the tumor. When they finished their operation, LynLee was returned to the womb and her mother’s uterus was sewn shut.

Boemer was on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy. She made it to 12 weeks to nearly 36 weeks — full term — when Lynlee was born for the 2nd time via C-section on June 6.
Immediately, she was whisked away to the neonatal intensive care unit for an evaluation, but after this initial checkup, she was deemed healthy and transferred to the nursery. LynLee recovered in the NICU and weeks later, arrived in her family home.