A Florida baby was partially delivered at 25 weeks so doctors could save his life and then placed back in the womb to keep growing.
A Family’s Joy Turned Upside Down
When we find out a new baby is on the way we start counting down the days. We get excited about every scan every appointment every little update. We want to see those tiny fingers and hear that heartbeat.
But for one Florida family what started as pure joy turned into something no parent should ever have to face.
Keishera and Greg Joubert were thrilled when they found out their 2-year-old son Mattias was going to be a big brother. A baby boy was on the way. But at 19 weeks into the pregnancy everything changed.
Doctors discovered that their son Cassian had Congenital High Airway Obstruction Syndrome known as CHAOS. A thick membrane was blocking his airway trapping fluid in his lungs and squeezing his tiny heart.
“No one ever wants to hear that this baby has a very real chance of dying in the womb, not even making it to birth,” Keishera said.
The condition affects about 1 in every 50,000 to 100,000 births and it is almost always fatal. Keishera went online and what she read broke her.
“A lot of the articles would say that it’s devastatingly fatal. A lot of the babies die in the womb or shortly after birth, and I immediately just closed my laptop, and I went straight into the bedroom, into a corner, just started crying,” she said.
When Medicine Met a Miracle
Greg said they had maybe a 20 to 25% chance of a good outcome before surgery. Dr. Emanuel Vlastos at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital had seen a dozen CHAOS cases in 42 years. Only three babies survived. But he wasn’t ready to give up on Cassian.
“Those are all cases from the past when we talk about the cases we know. We don’t know about the case present, and perhaps that’s where hope floats us down the stream of life,” Vlastos said.
At 22 weeks Keishera had laparoscopic surgery to cut through the membrane. It didn’t work. The membrane was too thick. “We’re not even at square one; we’re a step behind square one,” Keishera said.
So Vlastos came up with something nobody had ever done successfully for a baby like Cassian. He would partially deliver the baby through a cesarean section with just the head and arms outside the womb.
The rest of Cassian’s body stayed connected to the placenta. And while the baby was still attached an ear nose and throat specialist performed a tracheostomy to create an airway.
At 25 weeks they did it. And it worked.
Keishera joked with the doctor afterward. “I am a little bit jealous. You got to see my baby before me.” He showed her a photo from the surgery and she saw her son’s face for the first time. His little mouth his eyes his eyebrows and the tiny tracheal stent keeping him alive.
“It was a glimpse of the future. It was a glimpse of a little baby boy that I would eventually take home from the hospital,” she said.
Cassian Comes Home
At 31 weeks Keishera’s water broke and more than 30 nurses and doctors rushed in. They replaced Cassian’s tracheostomy tube with one that would work outside the womb. A ventilator and feeding tube took over what the placenta had been doing.
After 132 days in the NICU Cassian finally went home.
“What greater triumph was it then that we could finally take our baby home,” Keishera said.
Two Birthdays and a Whole Lot of Hope
The family is now getting ready to celebrate two parties. One for the anniversary of the surgery that saved his life and another for his actual first birthday. Cassian still faces at least three more surgeries before he turns 2. The road is not over yet.
“We’re not through it yet, but honestly, aren’t we all, like, in need of a good story?” Greg said.
We really are. And this is one of those stories that reminds us God is working even when the odds say there’s no way. He made a way for this little boy when the textbooks said it couldn’t be done. So let’s keep lifting up the Joubert family in prayer.
Cassian still has a journey ahead of him and our God who brought him this far is not done yet.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” — Jeremiah 29:11
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