Numb

A friend of mine is pregnant after much trying and a stillbirth. She had an ultrasounds today and it revealed that her baby has an encephalocele on the back of its head. She had said that she was trying to find something positive in the prognosis and I said that I would help her. I cant bring myself to talk to her about the things that I have found because none of them are good.

An encephalocele is a bulge of the brain caused by the neural tube failing to close during the first few weeks of development in the uterus. In general the babies that have these may or may not survive depending on the location and size of the encephalocele. Only about 21% of babies that have his diagnosed will survive to delivery. The most sobering statistic is that only 55% of babies that have one of these on the back of their head survive. Of the babies that survive, about 75% of the babies have some form of mental deficit. This means that her baby has a 97% chance of having something wrong or dying from this condition and only a 3% chance of being completely normal.

My friend is devistated over the news that there is something wrong with her baby since she is only 20 weeks pregnant. Then to hear these kinds of things would just break her. I am going to keep searching...there has to be good news....