{"id":222038,"date":"2020-04-18T13:40:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-18T18:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=222038"},"modified":"2020-04-17T17:10:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T22:10:17","slug":"elouise-surgery-spina-bifida-walking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/elouise-surgery-spina-bifida-walking\/","title":{"rendered":"A year ago, Elouise had surgery in the womb for spina bifida. Today, she’s walking."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last year, Elouise Simpson was one of the first people in the United Kingdom to ever undergo surgery for spina bifida in the womb\u00a0after she was diagnosed<\/a> prenatally. Now she is celebrating her first birthday.<\/p>\n

Elouise’s parents had first learned their daughter had spina bifida during their 20-week ultrasound. Doctors recommended abortion, but mom Bethan Simpson said she simply “couldn’t justify terminating a child I could feel kicking.” She and her husband Kieron learned about a surgical option from another hospital and decided on the prenatal surgery, which was still new in the United Kingdom and had only been performed successfully a few times. Bethan Simpson underwent the surgery at 25 weeks and Elouise was later born<\/a> “kicking and screaming – and peeing all over the place – so she ticked all the boxes.”\u00a0Today, she continues to do well.<\/p>\n

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