Carter I would describe him as strong-willed that's like the very first
thing that comes to mind he has a lot of personality he tries to pretend that
he's shy and is the complete opposite of that after about 30 seconds um he is
very sweet and he's compassionate if I'm not feeling good or if I have a headache
the next day he'll say mom are you feeling better and those things stick
with him he is a self-taught gymnast so he loves doing headstands and flips and
he tries to flip over the couches and jump off things and jump off stairs and
so he is just a big jumper right now so we're we get that and we love dancing so
we will turn music on in the house and we'll dance away right I am talking
about
June 24th we went in for our ultrasound then the doctor came in and she
introduced herself and she said I'm a high-risk OB so she said she wanted to
take a look and that she thought our child might have what's called spina
bifida spina bifida is one of the more common birth defects it's the second
most common birth defect that we see in the United States it results from the
spine failing to close very early in pregnancy and it is the level of the
lesion or wear on the back the defect is present that determines what the level
of function will be for that individual child we met with the maternal fetal
medicine team and Dr. Treadwell we met her that day and then she brought up the
in utero fetal surgery but we would perform that surgery when you were still
pregnant before the procedure even happened I kind of talked to Dr.
Treadwell just to get an idea of like what to expect and I said you know is
there anyone that I can talk to so I know like what's gonna happen maybe what
to pack what you know what to expect once we go home and she said well
actually Kesey you would be the first one
the Hilton family was the first family that had the in utero spina bifida
repair here at Michigan Medicine when we talk about prenatal surgery for spina
bifida what we're literally talking about is opening the woman's abdomen
opening up her uterus while she's still pregnant operating on the baby while the
baby is still in the uterus closing everything up and trying to continue the
pregnancy for an additional 1012 weeks we were told originally if he walked
that he would have a very hard time with it most likely would be in a wheelchair
Carter does have a wheelchair it's in our garage because he doesn't really use
it the fact that he is just blown everyone away and is running around our
house asking us to chase him um is definitely something that I have to like
remind myself hey you know I was told that this might never happen and so if
he asked me to chase him around the kitchen then gosh darn it and chase him
around the kitchen