Baby Born With Intestines Outside Her Stomach Set For Her First Birthday
Lily-Rae Lawrence had to undergo surgery just four hours after birth and spent 150 days in hospital before being discharged last September.
Parents Melissa Thompson and Richard Lawrence, 32 and 34, noticed something was wrong when the 12-week scan showed a 'puff of smoke' outside Lily-Rae's belly.
Doctors diagnosed the baby girl with gastroschisis, a condition that causes her intestines to form out of a hole in her stomach, and it was feared the pressure building up in the organ could lead to a rupture.
Recalling Lily-Rae's condition before it was cured, Richard, an electrical engineer, said: "The stomach was flat on the scan, but we could see something in the picture outside of her belly, her bowels were on the outside.
"It looked like a puff of smoke outside her belly our initial thoughts were pure worry, you get yourself in a panic trying to get your head around it."
"When Lily-Rae was born they planned to put her bowels in a silo bag, which is a plastic bag raised above the belly and from there it takes several days for them to squeeze back into place.
"But it was not a normal case, it was very complicated and required more surgery."
The baby, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, was born at 36 weeks and five days, weighing 6lbs 2oz, as doctors noticed her intestines starting to dilate which could lead to blockages and rupturing.
Surgeons hoped to reinsert her bowels by wrapping them in a cling film-like material and let gravity naturally force it back inside the body, but they found the condition was much more complicated.
Out of 30cm of intestines outside the body, only 17cm of it was alive. Doctors were forced to remove the dead sections and create two stomas outside Lily-Rae's body.
After removing the dead intestines that had turned black, doctors hoped the remaining section would be able to survive on one blood vessel and regrow.
Lily-Rae had to undergo a third operation, but this time, the parents were told that the 17cm of her 'alive' bowel had miraculously grown to more than 23cm and parts of it had untangled.
The large intestine that was also in the clump had all survived as well.
Lily-Rae was discharged after 149 days in hospital and has since gone on to living like a healthy baby.
Melissa and Richard praised the doctors who helped their daughters overcome the odds. And now she is set for her first birthday.
