After discovering that her 16-week-old baby girl was developing a tumor and becoming increasingly ill while still in the womb, Margaret Boemer and her husband, from Lewisville, Texas, decided to undergo emergency fetal surgery.
After her mother’s sacrifice and a successful surgery, LynLee Hope was ultimately “born twice,” as CNN and other outlets noted.
“It was a choice of allowing the tumor to take over her body or giving her a chance at life.”
The child’s condition, called sacrococcygeal teratoma, indicates the development of a tumor — before birth — that grows from a baby’s coccyx, or tailbone. The tumor occurs in one out of some 40,000 births and is four times more likely to be found in girls, according to BCC News.
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Dr. Darrell Cass is the co-director of Texas Children’s Fetal Center and associate professor of surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College Medicine. The tumor tries to grow by sucking blood from the baby, she explained — but the baby is also trying to grow.
“It becomes a competition,” Cass told CNN.
LynLee, the third child for the Boemers, was already fighting for her life — while not yet born.
“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,” said LynLee’s mother.
Boemer already knew the pain of losing a child: She had tragically lost LynLee’s twin before the second trimester.
“It was an easy decision for us: We wanted to give her life,” said Boemer.
The baby was just 23 weeks and five days old when Cass performed the emergency fetal surgery.
By this time, the tumor was nearly larger than the baby, who weighed just slightly over one pound at the time of the surgery, according to BBC News.
Cass and Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, his partner surgeon, operated for about five hours. The child’s heart virtually stopped during the procedure, but a heart specialist kept her alive while the tumor was removed, Cass told CNN. During the surgery, doctors remained cautious about the mother’s safety and health.
“We don’t want the mom’s health to be jeopardized,” said Cass, who explained they were extremely careful.
Margaret Boemer spent the next 12 weeks on bedrest, and Lynlee was “born again” on June 6, 2016. She was born by Caesarean at almost full term, weighing 5 pounds and 5 ounces, as BBC News reported.
When Lynlee was eight days old, doctors surgically removed the rest of the tumor from her tailbone.
Doctors confirmed the baby has been doing well.
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