This baby was born with most of his brain and skull missing, baby Jaxon
Emmett Buell was not expected to live.after his parents were told abort him when doctors discovered his condition.
But he has defied all odds - and now he has just celebrated
his first birthday.
Baby Jaxon's devout Christian parents, Brandon and Brittany
Buell, were told by doctors that he had an extreme brain malformation, which
meant he would probably not survive the pregnancy.
But Jax Strong – a nickname he has earned on social media -
is now one years old. His inspirational story has captivated families across
the U.S., with nearly 90,000 people 'liking' his page on Facebook and 18,000
people sharing his story.
Jaxon was diagnosed as having Anencephaly, a neural tube
birth defect in which a child is born without parts of the brain and skull, but
doctors were still unsure of how severe his condition would be.
About 1 in 4,859 babies in the United States will be born
with Anencephaly and usually die shortly after birth, according to the Center
for Disease Control and Prevention.
30-year-old Brandon, said: 'After our second ultrasound at
17 weeks, when we found out he was a boy, we knew something was up when the
ultrasound technician went towards his head and went very quiet.'
'Brittany got the call the next day from the doctors saying
there was a concern with the MRI results. She was in tears and told me there
was an issue with the baby. Of course, I lost it at work so they sent me home
and the rest of the day was a blur truly.'
For the next few weeks, the anxious couple were transferred
between doctors and given five possible conditions of what it could be. Spina
bifida, Dandy-walker syndrome and Joubert syndrome were all possibilities.
Doctors gave them the option to terminate the pregnancy at
23 weeks but the young couple, who are against abortion, believed it was not
their decision to make.
Brandon, who is an assistant to the CEO of a small community
bank in Florida, said: 'We went home that night thinking if you are telling us
to abort, we would never know what Jaxon could have been, if he could have
survived.'
'Who are we to decide? We were given a child, we are given a
chance and we have to be his voice.'
'We did everything we could to give him a fighting chance
and all he's done since being born is fight right back.'
Jaxon's 27-year-old mother, said: 'I was devastated. It was
heart breaking because something I always wanted my whole life was happening,
but then I was told there was a possibility it might be a stillborn.
'It took all the joy away from me. The happiness that normal
women have when they are pregnant - I had none of that.'
The miracle baby survived the pregnancy and was born by
caesarian section on August 27, 2014 weighing four pounds.
He spent his first three weeks connected to multiple tubes
in a neonatal intensive-care unit in Winnie Palmer Hospital, Florida, as brain
surgeons tried to understand his condition.
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