When Katrina Frydlewicz went in for an ultrasound, she was in her 20th week. And unfortunately, her doctors at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia had some bad news for her. It turned out that the heart of the baby in Katrina’s stomach hadn’t fully developed. The baby’s outlook was grim, and the hospital staff asked the parents to prepare for the worst. But doctors also mentioned a possible alternative to the couple. It was a risky and relatively new procedure: heart surgery on the fetus… inside the womb.
Katrina and her husband, Tony, were willing to do anything to save their son’s life.
“We held on to that little glimmer of hope. Maybe, there’s an experimental procedure that would give him hope,” Katrina told ABC News.
The only problem was that no child who had undergone this type of surgery had ever lived longer than one year.
Neither doctors nor parents would know if the surgery would be successful until the baby was born three months later. But Tony and Katrina chose to give the risky and so-called “impossible” operation the green light.
Three months later, Katerina gave birth to a chubby little baby boy. His name was Stodge. The moment he was born, the child screamed and cried in a way that doctors said only a healthy baby can.
A year later, the miracle boy celebrated his first birthday, a feat that no one thought possible. Tony says he hopes Stodge will “grow up and hopefully have a family of his own. Just grow old like the rest of us.”
See Stodge today and find out more about he and his mom’s surgery in this video:
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