Baby Samuel

Last night as I was reading through Facebook statuses, someone had posted a photo that I thought I would be disgusted by because it looked like it was some type of surgery.  But before judging, I read the description and became so touched by the story.  I looked more into it and realized that this story was from 1999! How did I miss this? This must have been something on the TODAY show, but then again I was a Sophomore in College and wasn't really in tune with the news world. 

So you may have seen this but I wanted to post this regardless, to help us realize how precious human life is.

Baby Samuel Armas was diagnosed with Spinal Bifida at 14 weeks while he was in his mother's womb.  In order for him to survive in this world, open fetal surgery was required.  How nerve-wracking this must have been for the parents.  I couldn't imagine the stress and worries that they experienced.  The surgery was taken place while Samuel was 21 weeks old.  A photographer was present at the surgery and snapped a remarkable moment. 

From Wikipedia - "The operation was performed by a surgical team at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The team, Dr. Joseph Bruner and Dr. Noel Tulipan, had been developing a technique for correcting certain fetal problems in mid-pregnancy. Their procedure involved temporarily opening the uterus, draining the amniotic fluid, partially extracting and performing surgery on the tiny fetus, and then restoring the fetus to the uterus back inside the mother."

During the surgery, the baby's hand reached out and gripped the doctor's finger.  Here's the photo (a little graphic)

Absolutely Amazing.

The surgery was a success and Samuel was born on December 2nd 1999.  Here's a photo of him in 2009:

What a beautiful story.