Baby Goes Home After Surgery To Mend Face, Brain

Shortly after Mary Gundrum found out that her unborn son was developing with part of his brain outside his skull, she found herself searching the internet to find out more about the baby's diagnosis and potential treatment.

Her next search would be for infant-sized coffins.

"He was only supposed to live a couple of hours," she said.

Instead, baby Dominic was born "screaming and kicking and full of life," but he had a Tessier midline facial cleft, which means the sides of his face didn't fuse together properly during early pregnancy, causing it to split down the middle. Dominic also had an encephalocele, a rare cranial abnormality that means a sac of brain tissue and fluid formed outside the skull. Dominic's encephalocele filled the space between the cleft in his face, splitting his nose in two with a fluid-filled bubble and causing some of his brain matter to sag into his mouth.
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