Tot survives being born with heart outside body
Parents refused to give up hope when scan showed incredibly rare condition
A BABY has become the first in the UK to survive being born with her heart outside of her body.
Vanellope Wilkins’s parents were told there was “next to no hope” that she’d live when the abnormality was picked up at a nine-week scan.
Mum Naomi Findlay was advised to terminate the pregnancy but she refused and never gave up hope.
Vanellope’s breast bone had failed to develop normally, causing her heart and part of her stomach to grow on the outside.
The condition, called ectopia cordis, is incredibly rare and most babies affected suffer from defects of the heart and other abnormalities.
Around 90 per cent of them are stillborn and most of those surviving birth die within days.
There were only a handful of cases worldwide where a baby has survived the condition and none in the UK.
A team of 50 staff were on hand to assist when Vanellope was born by Caesarean section at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester.
Naomi, 31, felt “physically sick” with fear that her daughter would die.
She said: “When she came out crying, that was it, the relief fell out of me.”
Within seconds of being born, Vanellope was wrapped in a sterile plastic bag to protect against infection. Special lines were inserted into the umbilical cord when the baby was still attached to Naomi, to support her heart.
Just 50 minutes after birth, the tot had surgery to start the process of putting her heart back inside her chest.
A week later, a second op opened her chest wider to make more space for the heart, which sank into the cavity over the next two weeks, thanks to gravity.
This allowed staff to carry out the final op – taking skin from under her arms to cover the middle of her body. Surgeons also created a mesh to protect her heart as she does not have ribs or a sternum.
Vanellope, who was born on November 22, is still attached to a ventilator, but surgeons hope she will go on to lead a normal, healthy life.
Dad Dean, 43, of Bulwell, Nottinghamshire, said: “She is doing really well. She’s a fighter.”
Vanellope has three brothers – Daniel, 13, Caleb, nine, and Jacob, five. The co-founder of salon chain Toni & Guy has died, aged 75. Giuseppe Toni Mascolo and his brother set up their first hairdressing salon in London in 1963.