PHOTO: Baby girl born with part of her brain outside

• Posted on February 6, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

A baby born with part of her brain outside her skull is thriving despite doctors giving her little chance of survival.

Faith Martin, now aged three months, was not expected to breathe on her own when she was born.

Doctors also explained to her heartbroken parents Jessica Williams, 20, and Aaron Martin, 21, that they wouldn’t intervene if she couldn’t.

During a 17-week pregnancy scan at Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital her parents were told she had the rare condition encephalocele.

Encephalocele is described as a sac-like protrusion of the brain, and the membranes that cover it, through an opening in the skull.

It happens when the neural tube – an embryo’s precursor to the central nervous system which comprises the brain and spinal cord – does not close completely during pregnancy.

Ms Williams, who is also mother to one-year-old Logan, said: ‘I went for my first scan and they said that there was a problem.

‘We didn’t know what to think and the consultant came to see us. I was in shock.

‘They knew straight away that the skull hadn’t fused together properly and that there was a hole in the back of her skull.’

Because prospects for babies with this condition are often catastrophic – many do not survive and others are left with lifelong brain damage and other neurological problems – many parents choose to terminate the pregnancy.
Ms Williams said: ‘The consultant said that he thought that she was going to be severely disabled.

‘All along we were told it was the part of the brain that controlled breathing that was affected.

‘We were told that most babies that they knew of had died from it.

‘They said that a termination was completely up to us and did we want to go away and think about it?

‘But if there was any chance at all then we wanted to give it to her.

‘We never gave termination a thought.’

The pair met with a consultant at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) who offered them some hope.

Ms Williams said: ‘He said that he’d seen them much bigger and seen the baby be OK in the end.’

To avoid any damage to the protrusion, Ms Williams had planned a Caesarean section birth.

However her waters broke on October 13 and the C-section was brought forward.

Ms Williams said: ‘She cried straight away – and a couple of minutes later there was another cry.

‘The consultant said he was happy enough to let her be left with us on the ward. I always clung onto the hope that she would be OK.’

The pair were sent home with their new baby the day after with weekly visits to a nurse-led clinic planned.

Faith had a MRI scan four days after she was born.

-Dailymail Uk