When Margaret Boemerwent for a routine ultrasound while 16 weeks pregnant with her third child, doctors discovered that her baby had a sacrococcygeal teratoma, which is a tumor that develops before birth and grows from a baby’s tailbone, CNN reports.
The tumor steals the blood supply from the fetus in an effort to grow, causing the fetus to become ill. Some doctors advised Boemer to terminate her pregnancy, but doctors at Texas Children’s Fetal Center offered her another option: fetal surgery.
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The risky procedure would not be an easy one, but Boemer knew she wanted to give her daughter a chance to live.
“LynLee didn’t have much of a chance,” Boemer said. “At 23 weeks, the tumor was shutting her heart down and causing her to go into cardiac failure, so it was a choice of allowing the tumor to take over her body or giving her a chance at life. It was an easy decision for us: We wanted to give her life.”
So when Boemer was 23 weeks and 5 days pregnant, doctors performed the surgery. By this time, the tumor was so large, a “huge” incision was needed to get to it, so 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,” 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.
The surgical team removed most of the tumor, placed little LynLee back inside her mother’s womb and sealed Boemer’s uterus shut. Boemer then carried LynLee another 12 weeks to nearly 36 weeks before giving birth again via C-section on June 6.
After her birth, surgeons removed the remaining bits of LynLee’s tumor and the newborn was able to go home with her family weeks later.
“Baby Boemer is still an infant but is doing beautiful,” said Cass, adding that LynLee is perfectly healthy.
Boemer said that the surgery was “very difficult,” but seeing LynLee smile with her sisters made it all worthwhile.
“It was worth every pain,” she said.
This article originally appeared on our sister site, Womanista.com.
