My Baby Was Born Premature With a ‘Scary’ 4-Pound Tumor on Her Tailbone

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For expecting parents, learning your baby has something wrong is terrifying. It’s already overwhelming to go through the stress of pregnancy, but then when you know there’s an added risk to your baby’s health, it can make the whole experience that much more difficult.

One family in Louisiana is opening up about what it was like when they found out that their daughter had a tumor growing in utero. But after a precarious pregnancy, delivery, and surgery, their daughter is now thriving. And they couldn’t be happier.

It was a shocking discovery for the family.

Kristin and Jacob Tyler found out that they were expecting their second child in September 2023. The couple were excited to expand their family, but things got scary a few months later. In February at Kristin’s 20 week anatomy scan, doctors said their baby could have spina bifida.

Speaking with People, Kristin said she was “freaking out.” She said, “I didn’t even know what that was.”

The official diagnosis was something much more rare.

While they found out that it wasn’t spina bifida, a specialist diagnosed their baby with sacrococcygeal teratoma, a rare fetal tumor that forms on the tailbone. It only happens in 1 in every 20,000 births. With a diagnosis like that, they got a referral to the Texas Children’s Women’s Pavilion in Houston, 245 miles away from their Louisiana home.

In March, Kristin, her son William, and her mother, moved to Texas to be closer to doctors who could monitor the baby. “I was very scared,” Kristin said. “After so many doctor appointments and seeing it on the ultrasound, it was scary.”

The tumor is simply 'bad luck.'

The couple began working with Dr. Ahmed Nassr, maternal fetal medicine specialist and fetal surgeon at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. Nassr explained everything about the condition: it was more common in girls, it was usually benign, and doctors didn’t really know why it happened. The doctor chalked it up to “just bad luck.”

Nassr told People that the tumors can grow very large and have large blood vessels as well. “They basically steal the blood supply from the baby,” he explained. “The heart of the baby needs to work very hard,” which, he says, “can lead to heart failure.”

They had a successful delivery.

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Kristin gave birth to a baby girl, Adalida, on April 21, at 34 weeks via C-section. The 16-centimeter, 4-pound tumor was “a little bit smaller than a watermelon,” according to Nassr, and nearly tw0-thirds of Adalida’s birth weight. “It was a big tumor, that’s why we were so worried,” Nassr added.

Kristin only saw Adalida “for a split second,” on a TV camera before medical staff took her to the NICU. Doctors immediately began talking about surgeries the baby would need. “I had just had her, and I was crying and I was upset,” Kristin said.

Two days after her birth, Adalida underwent surgery to remove her tumor. On June 29, her due date, she was able to go home.

Baby Adalida is now thriving.

Months after her surgery, Kristin shared that her baby girl is “a good, happy baby” who is “healthy,” “healed” and meeting all of her developmental milestones.

“We call her our miracle baby,” the proud mom gushed.

When Adalida is between 2 and 3 years old, the family will head back to Texas Children’s for cosmetic surgery. Doctors removed the tumor from the bottom of her spine, leaving a flat surface.

“They’re basically going to make her look more like everybody else. They told me that all of the medical stuff was taken care of, that it was just cosmetic,” Kristin explained.