Facebook - Margaret Hawkins Boemer
Margaret Boemer first knew there was something wrong with her unborn bub, Lynlee, at her 16-week scan.
Already a mum of three with husband, Jeff, the devastated mum was told her little girl had a sacrococcygeal teratoma – a rare tumor that grows on the baby’s tailbone.
The defect, which more commonly affects girls, can usually be removed after a child is born, but in this case, the tumour had begun to restrict Lynlee’s blood supply.
While they were advised to terminate, Margaret and Jeff sought a second opinion and were given some hope.
Doctors at the Texas Children’s Fetal Centre (TCFC) agreed to actually remove Lynlee from the womb to operate on the tumour, before placing her back in the womb.
So when she was five months pregnant, Margaret underwent risky five-hour surgery. Doctors removed as much of the tumour as they could, before putting 539-gram Lynlee back in her mum’s tummy.
Margaret then carried her little girl to full-term, before she was born via caesarean section.
While she will still need further surgeries in the future, Lynlee is thriving and doing well.
‘Our reason for sharing Lynlee’s story is so that others who are given similar news of a diagnosis have hope and information that there are options other than termination,’ Margaret wrote on her Facebook page.
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