Baby Born Twice: For Operation, Then For Birth

When Margaret Boemer went for a routine ultrasound 16 weeks into her third pregnancy, she found that things are not going very well for her unborn child. She was informed by her doctor that there was something very wrong with her child - sacrococcygeal teratoma - two scary words that, truly terrified her.

The two words, however, are definitely a cause for concern. As CNN explained, sacrococcygeal teratoma is a tumor that develops from the baby's coccyx or tailborn, before he or she is even born. Dr. Darrell Cass, the director of Texas Children's Fetal Center and an associate professor of surgery said that this is the most common tumor that doctors usually see in newborns - "common" being relative, as it is still considered to be a rare disease, occurring in one out of every 35,000 births.

Cass explained that while the tumor can be well-tolerated, it is dangerous for Boemer's child - it can cause problems for the fetus as the tumor tries to grow by sucking blood flow from the baby, making their growth a competition for each other. He explained that there are instances when "the tumor wins and the heart just can't keep up and the heart goes into failure and the baby dies."

The doctors advised Boemer to terminate the pregnancy - and at 23 weeks, the tumor had gotten so big that it was starting to shut the baby's heart down, causing a cardiac failure. However, she and her partner wanted to give their baby a chance at life and opted to do an operation to keep her safe:

At 23 weeks and 5 days pregnant, an operation was performed to extract the tumor. At this point, it was nearly larger than the fetus itself. However, to operate safely, Cass had to do a huge incision and ended up with the baby "hanging out in the air" - essentially having the fetus outside, with the amniotic fluid falling out of her mother.

The surgical team removed the bulk of the tumor and finished the operation by having the baby put back in the womb as they sewed her mother's uterus shut. Boemer remained on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy, but made it to another 12 weeks to nearly full term before her daughter - Lynlee Hope, was born for a second time via C-section.

People noted that Lynlee had surgery again at only 8 days old to remove the rest of the tumor, but today, it seems that the child is doing well as could be expected, with her mother, Margaret saying that the family is "very happy" now.