AUSTIN, Texas — For seven months, doctors and nurses in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. David’s Medical Center worked around the clock to care for a little girl just beginning her life.
Her mother, Sheryl Henrickson, was preparing to become a mother for the third time when she learned her unborn daughter had congenital diaphragmatic hernia, or CDH.
The condition causes a fetus’ abdominal organs to move into the chest, crowding the lungs and preventing them from developing normally. According to the National Institutes of Health, CDH affects about 2.5 out of every 10,000 births…