A ‘miracle’ baby has been born with a tumor so large that it weighed nearly as much as her.
Kristin and Jacob Tyler of Louisiana were about 20 weeks pregnant in February 2024 with their second child when doctors noticed an abnormal growth on a routine ultrasound.
Doctors diagnosed the couple’s unborn baby girl with a sacrococcygeal teratoma, a one-in-27,000 tumor that forms during pregnancy in the baby’s tailbone.
Mrs Tyler, 23, said: ‘I was very scared. After so many doctor appointments and seeing it on the ultrasound, it was scary.’
Baby Adalida was born on May 21 at 34 weeks, with a ‘watermelon-sized’ tumor weighing four pounds, nearly two-third’s of the newborn’s body weight.
Adalida Tyler (pictured here) was born in May with a four-pound tumor growing out of her tailbone
The above image shows Adalida’s ultrasound scan, where the tumor – called sacrococcygeal teratoma – can be seen
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Dr Ahmed Nassr, a maternal fetal medicine specialist and fetal surgeon at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women, told People that sacrococcygeal teratoma is ‘very rare’ and occurs for unknown reasons.
He said: ‘It’s just bad luck.’
While the majority of these tumors are not cancerous, they can pose significant dangers to a newborn.
This is because as they grow, they develop large blood vessels. Dr Nassr said: ‘They basically steal the blood supply from the baby.’
This means ‘the heart of the baby needs to work very hard,’ and that excess strain can eventually lead to heart failure.
In March, Mrs Tyler and her one-year-old son, William, relocated to Texas to better monitor Adalida.
Along with the challenging move, Mrs Tyler felt increasingly more isolated, as none of her friends and family had ever heard of sacrococcygeal teratoma.
She told People: ‘There was nobody for me to reach out to talk about it. It felt like we were in the dark.’
Adalida was born via C-section due to the tumor’s large size. The tumor was successfully removed two days after birth, and the newborn was able to go home about a month later
Adalida’s mother, Kristin Tyler, told People that the infant has hit all of her developmental milestones
Mrs Tyler delivered Adalida via C-section due to the tumor’s size.
Dr Nassr said: ‘We needed to be very careful during delivery. We had to avoid any trauma or rupture of the tumor. ‘Because sometimes with that large of a tumor, it can rupture and can start bleeding, and the baby can become very sick after delivery.’
Adalida was born at 34 weeks, with her tumor coming in at four pounds and 16 centimeters. Combined, the baby and tumor weighed just over 10 pounds.
‘It was a big tumor, that’s why we were so worried,’ Dr Nassr said.
Mrs Tyler noted that she only got to see Adalida ‘for a split second’ before the newborn was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
She said: ‘I had just had her, and I was crying and I was upset.’
Two days later, surgeons were able to fully remove the tumor. Adalida was finally able to go home just over a month later, on June 29 – her due date.
Mrs Tyler said that Adalida has had no complications from her ordeal and has met all of her developmental milestones.
‘She’s a good, happy baby,’ Mrs Tyler said. ‘She’s healthy. She’s all good. She’s healed.
‘We call her our miracle baby. We call her angel baby. There were so many people that loved her. I’m so grateful.’
