Birdie’s Surprise
CONGENITAL DIAPHRAGMATIC HERNIA
by Ellen McVay, photos provided by Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital
Soon, a devastating diagnosis: Birdie had congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), a hole in the diaphragm that results in abdominal organs migrating up into the chest — choking off lung growth.
There was something different about this pregnancy.
Mary couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt it intuitively.
She showed up in the emergency department of a Tampa hospital on a Saturday evening in October, days before her scheduled induction. Would the doctors think she was just being dramatic? They didn’t.
Mary was in labor.
“I had never even heard of CDH,” Mary says. “In the blink of an eye, our lives just shifted.” CDH is increasingly diagnosed before a baby’s birth — typically, during the 20-week ultrasound. But sometimes, particularly if the heart appears to be in a normal position and the liver hasn’t moved up into the chest, this life-threatening birth defect can go undetected.
Baby girl Birdie entered the world at 11:03 p.m. that very same evening.
Now Mary and Rob had an urgent decision to make. Should Birdie remain for care at the Tampa hospital — or was there another choice?
Something wasn’t right.
A doctor at the hospital told Mary about a special center in St. Petersburg.
But Birdie’s arrival date wasn’t the only surprise. “When she came out, she was blue,” Mary says. “I started pounding her back. I knew she wasn’t breathing.”
The delivery team took the baby and immediately began to manually resuscitate her. Mary’s husband, Rob, followed as their newborn was rushed to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She was put on a ventilator. What was wrong with Birdie?
64 TampaBayParenting.com APRIL 2022 PRESENTED BY JOHNS HOPKINS ALL CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
The Center for Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CCDH) at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital is an inpatient center dedicated solely to the treatment of CDH. It was the first of its kind in the country and remains a place where survival rates exceed national benchmarks. “He told me, ‘If my son or daughter were in this situation, I’d send my child there,’” Mary says.
