Patient shares story, thanks for SSM St. Mary's and St. Louis Fetal Care Institute

This week, the St. Louis Fetal Care Institute celebrated its five year anniversary with the staff at SSM St. Mary's, sharing cake and information about all that the Fetal Care Institute provides. There is no information or story more powerful than one that comes from one of our patients. Here is a story of success and thanks for all SSM St. Mary's and the St. Louis Fetal Care Institute provides.

When I was 20 weeks pregnant with my baby girl, we went to find out the gender of our baby. We are from a small town in Illinois and were told it looked like she had down syndrome but they needed to send us to another hospital for better scans. When we got there, the fetal doctor told us she did not have downs, she had spina bifida. She was literally reading out of a text book to tell us what our daughter had.

I was terrified. The doctor immediately told us she could set us up with an abortion clinic. That obviously was not an option and I was heart broken she repeatedly told me the baby would be a vegetable and that she wouldn't be able to eat on her own, would have mental retardation,  need a shunt, never walk, never be able to use the bathroom alone, and much, much more. I went home that night and cried and looked up spina bifida and read nothing but bad things. 

Finally, I came across a new option that was being tested and in trial for spina bifida. It was fetal surgery. We discovered the staff at St Louis Fetal Care. They treat you with respect, hope and love from the moment you step in the door. They treat you like royalty. All of the doctors have small meetings about each case so that the entire team is on the same page. So you get one story or answer not many different ones. They never once mentioned the word abortion. They wait on you hand and foot. The facility is comfortable and like home. They offer nothing but hope and help.

Right away, I left all of my trust in their hands. We decided to go along with the surgery. I wanted the best for my baby. We decided to have MMC fetal surgery that was done by Dr. Vlastos at St. Mary's Medical Center. The doctors would go into my uterus while i was still pregnant and pull the baby's back out and close the lesion and then put her back in to cook a little longer. (spina bifida is where there is a hole in the baby's back and a missing piece of bone that connects the spine to the tail bone. The open hole in the uterus with the amniotic fluid is what causes all the damage. The amniotic fluid gets in the body and touches the nerves and organs and muscles and makes them not function correctly, This surgery allows for the hole to be closed and further damage to be prevented.)

Although this was super awesome, we were some of the earliest families at this hospital to do the surgery. The surgery was done at 25 weeks gestation, which immediately sent me into contractions, and I was on bed rest in the hospital on and off until 33 weeks when my placenta ruptured and my daughter was born. She spent 27 days in the NICU. She sees many doctors and specialists, but with all that being said, the only thing we battle is that she cannot use her lower legs below the knee at full function because of damaged muscles. She has very little feeling in them.

She does not need a shunt in her head, and has absolutely no internal issues! She's beat the odds from day one and continues to impress all of her doctors. She requires therapy 4 times a week, but is a super fast army crawler (she can probably beat a sol​​​dier at a race) and just a few weeks ago she started pulling to stand! It is not graceful and she usually tumbles but she is trying! 

Dr. Vlastos was our fetal care specialist. To this day the staff knows our family by face and name. They love to have our daughter visit. They still continue to watch her progress. There are not many places that take the time to keep in touch with patients after they are no longer patients. They do! Dr. Elbabaa was the Neurosurgeon that helped with the fetal surgery. To this day he is still my daughter's doctor. It is really amazing to have a doctor that started treating our baby before she was born and still treats and monitors her two years later. We are convinced that Fetal Care Institute staff are angles and that Drs. Vlastos and Elbabaa are the smartest men alive! We trust them with everything we have. 

The staff at St. Mary's that treated me many weeks during and after fetal surgery and when I delivered my baby, were so amazing and attentive. They were confident and up to date on our rare situation. I am sure at times I drove the nurses bonkers thinking I was about to die while hooked to magnesium sulfate for many hours at a time, but they never showed it. They were awesome keeping my doctors up to date. I remember having long personal talks with the nurses and they would just listen and care and talk back during this very emotional time. They treated my baby like gold the short time she was there. She was transferred to Cardinal Glennon to prepare for a long stay and needed to be with her specialists.

My doctors in our small town in Illinois were scared to treat me and even check up on me after fetal surgery. Twice, St. Mary's flew over nurses to ride with me back to the St. Louis location to take good care of me and make me feel comfortable. I can never repay St. Mary's and Cardinal Glennon for everything they have done for me and my baby!​