The Specialized Field of Fetal Surgery

In 2009, when my wife was 20 weeks pregnant, we were told that our little girl in the womb had spina bifida. We had never heard of it. The next day we traveled to Atlanta to see a specialist and get some more information and a second opinion.

One of our options was to move to Philadelphia for probably 6-8 months to be a part of a trial one of the in-utero surgeries referenced here. We declined for several reasons:

* All the daunting decisions that might come with relocation

* Possibility of her being in the control group

* Additional risk to her from in-utero surgery

* Unknown benefit compared to post-natal surgery

Maybe some others. For us, relocation would have been a huge disruption of our life and goals at the time. If not for that we might have been more interested.

I sometimes wonder if I should regret that decision, now that studies are showing outcomes to be better overall, but I don't. We are happy. Our child is not without issues, but she's OK, and we obviously have no insight on how making the opposite decision would have changed her life or ours.

My wife was also able to have VBAC for both of our other children. I'm not sure this would have been possible, had we gone through with this. A small thing, but not insignificant to us.

FYI, due to the complications involved with dosing anesthesia at small weights, surgery was for the most part done on babies without anesthesia prior to 1986.

Obviously I think it should be done, but it brings up a fascinating philosophical debate and shows how different surgeries on babies and those and the womb can be. Many of those who’ve had surgery as a baby no longer recall the pain. Does this make what happened okay? Some ppl argue circumcising causes a great deal of pain, but there is no society-wide memory of searing pain from that procedure.