“He has so much joy. He’s always smiling, even if it’s a hard day,” says Mandy, Kaleb’s mom. “It’s weird to think of what he has been through at such a young age, but he’s full of life despite all of it.”
When Beth Kanemoto was pregnant with identical twins Kai and Klay, it felt like every two weeks she received more bad news. First, they learned the pregnancy was high risk. Initially, doctors thought the twins might be conjoined, but they soon learned that instead, Klay and Kai were considered mono-mono twins, meaning that they shared just one amniotic sac with no barrier between them.
After a diagnosis of maternal fetal alloimmunization and losing baby Lucy to hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (HDFN), Bethany took action. She made it her mission to ensure that other mothers diagnosed with maternal alloimmunization had education about the risks of the disease and knew the steps for proper medical care and treatment so that their babies could survive HDFN.
Cincinnati Children’s, a national leader in prenatal myelomeningocele surgery, recently conducted their 100th prenatal surgical repair. Kelly Song’s daughter was diagnosed with spina bifida at 20 weeks. Read more:
The team at UC Davis decided to separate these conjoined twins at 9 months of age. They took special precautions such as house calls during COVID to give the girls the best chance at an amazing life.
11-weeks pregnant with her third child, Jessica Reger expected this pregnancy to go as smoothly as the others, with the exception of a complicated delivery with her second baby that required an emergency surgery and blood transfusions. But a routine ob/gyn visit revealed an abnormal blood screen – her blood was alloimmunized.