Medical Miracle: Baby Who Was Born 'Twice'

In one of the rarest cases, a baby was born twice. In 2016, a woman in America was 16 weeks pregnant when doctors had no other option but to cut her womb open and take the baby out for around 20 minutes. Margaret Boemer, from Texas, went for a routine check-up when doctors discovered that her unborn daughter had a rare growth called a sacrococcygeal teratoma attached to her tailbone. As per an old report by the BBC, the mass was diverting blood from the foetus, raising the risk of fatal heart failure.

"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 woman said in an interview shared by Texas Children's Hospital.

It was an emotional moment for her as originally, she was expecting twins and lost one of the babies before the second trimester.

She said that it was "very shocking and scary", because they didn't know what that long word meant or what diagnosis that would bring.

And after the tumour diagnosis, some even advised her to terminate the pregnancy, which was heartbreaking for her. 

Rather than give up hope, Boemer and her family turned to a specialised surgical team at Texas Children's Hospital, where doctors told her about the risky procedure that involved operating on the fetus directly while she was still developing, then putting her back inside the womb to allow the pregnancy to continue.

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Archive reports mentioned that the growth was nearly as large as the tiny fetus itself. Because it was drawing massive amounts of blood to sustain its own size, the baby's heart was working overtime. It was

By 23 weeks into the pregnancy, the complications increased as the strain was forcing the baby into cardiac failure. Doctors told the family that the baby would not survive without immediate intervention.

"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," Margaret Hawkins Boemer told CNN. "It was an easy decision for us: We wanted to give her life."

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The family trusted the doctors, but the baby was given a 50% chance of survival.

The doctors went on with the complex procedure. Doctor Darrell Cass of Texas Children's Fetal Centre was one of the team that did the surgery. He said that the baby was "hanging out in the air", as they had to make a "huge" incision to reach the tumour because it was so big.

The surgeons carefully brought the lower half of the tiny body out into the open. They connected to her mother through the placenta for oxygen and nourishment. The baby, weighing just over a pound, lay exposed while doctors performed the surgery.

The team successfully removed most of the mass, but during the operation was going on, the baby's heart virtually stopped, and a heart specialist kept her alive.

Once the tumour was cut away, surgeons gently guided the baby back inside, restored the fluid balance, and stitched the uterus completely shut.

For the remainder of the pregnancy, the mother was placed on strict bed rest to prevent early labour. At nearly 36 weeks, the baby was born a second time via C-section, weighing a healthy 5 pounds and 5 ounces. Eight days after her second arrival, doctors performed a routine operation to clean up the remaining tissue from the tailbone.

The miraculous child was named Lynlee Hope.