Baby born with four legs and two spines undergoes successful surgery
A 10 month old girl who was born with four legs and two spines has undergone a successful surgery to remove two of the extra limbs at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Illinois, Chicago.
The child, whose name is Dominique, was born in the Ivory Coast with extra limbs which protruded from her neck.
According to doctors, the extra limbs were weighing on her spines and overtaxing her heart and lungs.
After more than six hours of surgery at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Illinois, Chicago, Dominique can now sit up, laugh and is on her way to a much better future.
“She’s great. She’s doing very well,” foster mom Nancy Swabb told InsideEdition.com on Tuesday.
COMPLEX SURGERY
The baby arrived in Chicago in February, courtesy of Ohio-based charity Children’s Medical Mission West, to prepare for an extremely complex surgery requiring a 50-person medical team of surgeons, plastic surgeons, nurses and technicians.
The nonprofit group provides life-changing surgeries to needy children around the globe.
Swabb had never heard of the group before seeing a Facebook post seeking a host family for Baby Dominique while she underwent, and recuperated from, painstaking surgery to remove a parasitic twin.
Swabb saw a photo of sweet little Dominique and her mother in Abidjan and sent an application and letters of recommendation. Her husband felt as she did. In little more than a week, Dominique was in their arms.
The couple have two adopted children, ages 9 and 15, and so had already undergone detailed background checks, Swabb said.
AMAZING STORY
“It’s really an amazing story about trust and hope,” she said. “Here we are helping another family. They just happen to live on a different continent.”
As soon as physicians say she is able, Dominique will return her family, accompanied on the long flight home by an escort.
Surgeons left both spines intact because they seem to be functioning, Swabb said. “She has full mobility. She is doing what a 10-month-old can do. She’s moving her toes and fingers.”
The baby, who has sprouted two teeth and learned to wave since coming to America, may be heading to Africa as early as next month.
“It’s got to be unbelievably hard for her mother, being separated from her baby for two months,” Swabb said.
But when the time comes, saying goodbye to Dominique isn’t going to be easy for the host mother.