LONDON, Aug 3 — Baby Theo is only five months old, but he has already made medical history after surgeons repaired a serious birth defect while he was still in the womb.
Theo became the first British baby to undergo the pioneering procedure, prompting his mother Maisie Savage to say, “He’s a little miracle, isn’t he?”
It began as a routine 20-week scan that quickly turned into a shock for Savage and her partner Josh French when doctors discovered Theo had complex gastroschisis, the BBC reported today.
It’s a condition in which the intestines grow outside the body because the belly button does not develop properly.
In the most severe cases, the condition can mean months in intensive care, multiple operations and even a risk of death.
Specialists at the Great Ormond Street Hospital referred the London couple to a first-of-its-kind clinical trial at the Texas Children’s Hospital, one of the world’s foremost paediatric hospitals.
Savage said going overseas for treatment while still pregnant “was a huge decision”.
First, Savage and her partner went to Belgium for a Botox injection to relax Theo’s abdominal wall before flying to the United States, where doctors operated when Maisie was 26 weeks pregnant.
Surgeons partially exposed the womb, replaced the amniotic fluid with carbon dioxide to create working space, and then used keyhole surgery to gently move Theo’s organs back into his abdomen.
French later summed up the agonising wait during the operation, saying, “The length of that day, it felt like a week.”
Savage then spent the next 14 weeks carrying on with the pregnancy while recovering from a scar larger than a C-section incision, before Theo was born at full term by vaginal delivery in Texas in February 2026.
Lead surgeon Dr Michael Belfort said the result was so promising that “the inside of the uterus is now a new surgical space for innovation”.
Doctors now hope the success of the trial could eventually make the procedure more widely available, including in the UK, while Theo is back home in London doing the most important thing of all — thriving.
