the birth of their third child. The 5 pound 5  ounce baby girl arrived kicking and screaming,  

much to her parent's delight and relief.  Her birth was particularly special because  

it was actually the second time  that baby Lynlee had been born.  

“You can say she's seen the world twice,”  said her doctor. Birth is supposed to be  

a once-in-a-lifetime experience,  so how are some babies born twice?

The Boemers were already the proud parents of  2 little girls when they found out they were  

once again pregnant with their third child. After  having suffered a miscarriage a few months before,  

the expectant parents were delighted to  learn that Margaret was carrying twins,  

but once again, tragedy struck when  they lost one of the babies at 6 weeks.  

The Boemers were crushed, but tried their best  to stay positive and focus on the baby that  

had survived, but their optimism was about to  be tested yet again, in a truly shocking way.

When Margaret was 14 weeks pregnant, and  ultrasound revealed the Boemers were expecting yet  

another girl, and they even picked out a name  for her - they decided to call her Lynlee,  

after both of her grandmothers. But, just  2 weeks later at her 16 week ultrasound,  

Margaret knew something was wrong. She  first became suspicious when the ultrasound  

technician was unusually quiet during the  exam. Margaret was prepared for the worst,  

but the news that she would soon get from the  doctors would turn the Boemers' world upside down.

Margarets doctors diagnosed baby  Lynlee with sacrococcygeal teratoma,  

and explained that a large tumor was growing  at the base of their baby's tailbone.  

The incredibly rare condition affects just 1 in  40,000 pregnancies, and it can be life-threatening  

if left unchecked. As the tumor grows, it steals  blood supply from the fetus and puts pressure  

on the growing baby's heart, and eventually  can cause heart failure in the unborn baby.  

The Boemers were devastated. After everything  that they had been through already, it seemed  

unimaginable that their longed-for baby was facing  a life or death crisis before she was even born.

The tumor was already so large that their  prenatal doctor was worried that little Lynlee  

wouldn't make it to full term, so the Boemers,  who lived in the small town of Lewisville,  

Texas about 25 miles from Dallas, were immediately  sent to Houston to consult with specialists.  

The first hospital they went to told them  there was nothing that could be done.  

They said that Lynlee would die before making  it to term, and they strongly recommended that  

the Boemers terminate the pregnancy.  Unable to accept that grim diagnosis,  

the Boemers next turned to Texas Children's  Hospital, where they were relieved to find  

that the doctors there were cautiously optimistic  that something could be done to save baby Lynlee.  

It wouldn't be an easy road by any means,  and there were certainly no guarantees,  

but 2 doctors at Texas Children's Hospital had  successfully operated on a baby in utero 7 years  

prior, and they were willing to try the extremely  risky surgery again to try and save Lynlee.

Now 20 weeks along, the tumor was already almost  as big as Lynlee herself and was growing every  

day - in the ultrasound, it looked like the  baby was sitting on top of a large balloon.  

Although the tumor was already nearly 4 times  larger than the usual threshold at which doctors  

would operate and was putting an incredible  strain on little Lynlee's heart, Drs. Darrel  

Cass and Oluyinka Olutoye hoped to hold off on the  surgery until Margaret was 24 weeks along. This  

would give Lynlee a better chance of surviving if  she needed to be delivered early, so the Boemers  

were sent home to Dallas to wait and hope. Unlike  with her first 2 pregnancies, Margaret couldn't  

feel Lynnlee kicking or moving, and she knew that  her baby was running out of space - and time.

By 23 weeks along, the tumor had gotten so big  that Margaret's doctors in Dallas sent her back  

to Texas Children's Hospital. The Boemers expected  to be there for a week of testing, but to their  

dismay the doctors there told them that Lynlee  wouldn't survive another 2 days without surgery.  

If the surgery failed and Lynlee needed to  be delivered, she would be considered an  

“extremely preterm baby”, and she would be  on the very edge of survival for a premie.

Before the surgery could start, the Boemers had  to meet with dozens of doctors in a hospital  

boardroom to make sure that they understood  the risks of the surgery and were clear about  

all of their options. The anxious parents were  asked to make decisions about what doctors would  

do under certain circumstances, like whether  baby Lynlee should be resuscitated if her  

heart stopped during surgery, and they had to  sign mountains of paperwork acknowledging the  

risks of the surgery. “These are babies that  are essentially dying,” Dr. Olutoye said.  

“You have a child who's already sick, and  the operation itself can make her sicker.”

Margaret had managed to hold it together so far  throughout this strange and terrifying ordeal,  

but at this point she finally broke  down. “To think we had come so far,  

to try to save her,” she said. “I  was very nervous and scared. ... but  

my husband and I were focused on whatever  we needed to do to try to save our baby.”

Finally, after weeks of anxiously waiting  and hours of heartbreaking meetings,  

Margaret and Lynlee went into surgery that very  same night, at 23 weeks and 5 days along. Drs.  

Cass and Olutoye were assisted by a team  of about 20 other medical professionals for  

the complicated and extremely risky surgery. To  begin, the surgeons delicately made a meticulous  

incision through Margaret's abdomen and into her  uterus. Then, they carefully pulled the lower  

half of Lynlee's body out of the womb to get  access to the tumor at the base of her spine.  

This would be the first - but hopefully not  the last - time that Lynnlee would be “born”.

As the doctor's worked carefully to remove  Lynlee's tumor, suddenly the room was filled  

with the sounds of beeping alarms - Lynlee's  heart had stopped beating mid-procedure. Doctors  

and nurses rushed to resuscitate the tiny baby  and thankfully, her heart started beating again.  

After a blood transfusion to replace the  blood she had lost as the tumor was removed,  

the doctors were able to resume the operation,  and after 5 hours of gruelling work,  

they had removed 90% of the tumor and returned  tiny Lynlee to the safety of her mother's womb.

Closing the incision was actually  one of the trickiest parts of the  

whole operation - the doctors had to seal the  membrane of Margaret's uterus in such a way  

that it would be both watertight and be able to  continue to stretch as the pregnancy progressed  

and Lynlee grew over the coming weeks. Now  the real work would begin - ensuring that  

Margaret could carry Lynlee to term without  complications. Because of the incision the  

doctors had made in her uterus, Margaret  was at an increased risk of uterine rupture,  

so she was ordered to remain in Houston on strict  bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.  

To the Boemers' and their doctors' surprise and  relief, Lynlee continued to grow and her heart  

grew stronger now that it didn't have to work  so hard to pump blood through the huge tumor.

Finally, on June 6th, 2016, having  reached full term at 36 weeks along,  

doctors delivered Lynlee - for the second  time - by c-section. To everyone's delight,  

Lynlee came out kicking and screaming,  weighing a respectable 5 pounds 5 ounces.  

Dr. Olutoye remarked that she looked nothing  like the “small, little gelatinous baby”  

that he had operated on just a few weeks earlier.  During the surgery Lynlee's whole leg was the size  

of the doctor's finger, and it was incredible to  see how much she had grown in such a short time.

After her miraculous 2nd birth, Lynlee  was given her highly appropriate middle  

name - Hope. At 8 days old she underwent  another surgery to remove the rest of her tumor,  

and although she may require more surgeries in the  future to reconstruct some of her pelvic muscles,  

her recovery has been remarkably smooth. By 5  months old, little Lynlee Hope was hitting all  

of her milestones and had become a smiley, giggly  baby who loved spending time with her big sisters.  

She would continue to go back to Texas Children's  Hospital for checkups with her surgeons.  

“We're going to get very close,” Dr. Olutoye  says, considering he usually knows his patients  

from “before they are born ... all the way up  into adulthood.” Still, Lynlee is a special  

case for him. “You can say she's seen the world  twice,” says the doctor of his miracle patient.

Lynlee's rare birth - er, births -  garnered a lot of media attention,  

and her family found themselves on the  cover of newspapers and appearing on TV  

stations all over the world. While her parents  were a bit overwhelmed by all the attention,  

they also say that they are actually thankful  that their story is getting out there.  

“I can tell you when we were told this very  long name, we were scared and didn't know  

what that was and had never heard of  it,” said Margaret. “So I'm glad that  

it's getting attention so that others who are  diagnosed can know that they're not alone.”

While Lynlee's story may seem incredibly  unique, Margaret is right when she says that  

they are not alone. Believe it or not, there are  actually other cases of babies being born twice.  

These types of in-utero surgeries have only  been done a few hundred times worldwide,  

so it's still incredibly rare, and  only about 1 in 5 babies referred  

to doctors for pre-birth surgery are  actually eligible for the procedure.

Jackson Reinkemeyer is another one of these  miracle babies who was born twice. In 2017,  

Joni Reinkemeyer went in for her 19 week  ultrasound hoping to find out her baby's  

gender. She was told that she was expecting a son,  but she also got some terrible news - her son,  

Jackson was diagnosed with spina bifida, a  condition where the spine doesn't develop  

properly, leading to gaps in the spinal  column. The best hope for Jackson to have  

a somewhat easier life was for doctors  to operate on him before he was born,  

so at the end of her 2nd trimester, a team of 32  doctors and medical professionals completed the  

hospital's first in utero surgery, and Jackson was  born for the first time. 10 weeks later, he was  

born again via c-section. Jackson's mom, Joni,  is grateful that her son survived his surgery,  

and she marks the occasion in a pretty  special way - with 2 birthday celebrations.  

“Seeing that he was born twice,” she says,  “I think we can allow him two cakes.”

Spina bifida is one of the most common  reasons that doctors may need to operate  

on a baby before it's born. In 2018, Bethan  Simpson became only the 4th mother in the  

U.K. to have in-utero surgery at 20 weeks  along to correct her son's spina bifida,  

and she found comfort in Joni and Jackson's  story as she prepared for her baby's procedure.

Though still exceedingly rare, in utero  surgeries are becoming more common.  

There is even a TV series about it on PBS called  Twice Born. The series focuses on The Children's  

Hospital of Philadelphia's, which has a dedicated  Special Delivery Unit that exclusively does rare  

surgeries on babies still in the womb. Episodes  gave viewers a rare look into the unique unit,  

and showcased some incredibly rare and  extremely dangerous in-utero surgeries  

that aimed to correct everything from  a tumor in the mouth of a baby girl,  

to a potentially fatal urinary tract obstruction,  to even a rare case of twin-twin transfusion  

syndrome, where two babies share unequal  amounts of the placenta's blood supply,  

causing one baby to grow at  a faster rate than the other.

In-utero surgery is still incredibly rare, but  as surgical techniques continue to improve,  

we just might see more babies like  little Lynlee who are born twice!

If you thought learning about  babies who are born twice was cool,  

you'll definitely want to check out  our other videos, like this one called  

“What Happens When You Are Born”. Or, you  might find this other video interesting.

As always, thanks for watching, and don't  forget to like, share and subscribe!

See you next time!