Florida baby ‘born twice’ after elaborate surgery involving partial delivery

A Florida infant is said to have been born twice after undergoing what was an innovative, likely life-saving surgery that involved a partial delivery weeks before his mother then gave birth to him.Cassian Joubert’s remarkable story was recently first told publicly by his mother and father – Keishera and Greg Joubert – in a 1 May video published on social media by the Orlando Health Women’s Institute, which employs the surgeon that led the baby boy’s prenatal operation.Keishera and Greg Joubert then recounted their and Cassian’s experience to various US news outlets, including Good Morning America (GMA), where the mother revealed her son would mark his first year of life with two birthdays.“We’re planning just a small party for his birthday, [the] anniversary of his surgery that saved his life – and then, of course, for his ‘birth’ birthday, we’re going to have another … bash for him there to celebrate a whole year,” Keishera told GMA.Keishera and Greg Joubert learned that she was pregnant with Cassian in January 2025. As Keishera told the Florida news outlet Wesh 2 News, the couple were “very joyful” about the fact that their two-year-old son, Mattias, would be getting a baby brother.But 19 weeks into her pregnancy, the Jouberts received grim news. Doctors discovered Cassian had congenital high airway obstruction syndrome, or Chaos, a condition which involves a thick membrane impeding a fetus’s airway.Chaos affects just about one in every 50,000 births, according to one estimate, and it is often deadly because it causes fluid to become trapped in a fetus’s lungs. Keishera’s physician, Dr Emanuel “Mike” Vlastos, told Wesh he had only seen a dozen Chaos cases in his 42-year career – with only three of those babies surviving.And, while familiarizing herself with the defect, Keishera kept encountering the phrase “devastatingly fatal”, she said in the Orlando Health video.Keishera and Greg Joubert with their son, Cassian. Photograph: Orlando HealthVlastos soon scheduled an in-utero surgery aimed at trying to clear the unborn baby’s blockage with a laser scope, but the procedure failed.The Jouberts and Vlastos then regrouped, and the doctor suggested an extraordinary measure. He would partially deliver Cassian through a caesarean section, with only his head and arms outside his mother’s womb while the rest of him remained attached to her placenta. An ear, nose and throat specialist at that juncture would surgically create an airway for Cassian.The surgical team would then place Keishera’s baby back in her uterus. And after her uterus was closed up, Keishera would remain in the hospital until carrying Cassian to term.Keishera and Cassian underwent that elaborate, high-stakes procedure at Orlando Health’s Winnie Palmer hospital in June 2025, when she was 25 weeks pregnant. Amid the process, they took a picture of Cassian and showed it to Keishera, who called the image a “little … glimpse of the future”.“It was a glimpse of a little baby boy that I would eventually take home from the hospital,” Keishera said to GMA.Keishera then went into labor in August, six weeks after that successful surgery, which Orlando Health described as “rare and novel”. Orlando Health said Cassian had to be delivered through a specialized surgical procedure allowing him to “receive life-saving support before even taking his first breath”.Cassian subsequently began a lengthy stay in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, or Nicu. In the Orlando Health video, Greg made it a point to note how his son confronted this “beginning of a long journey of his survival” while weighing only 3lbs (1.4kg).“But they had everything under control,” Greg said of those caring for his family.After four months and nine days in the Nicu, Cassian finally got to go home with his family – just in time for Christmas.He does still have some procedures to grapple with, including to clear the thick membrane forcing him to still need a ventilator to breathe. Nonetheless, his homecoming was a milestone relished by the parents and doctor who gave it their all to make the occasion a reality.“Him coming home … is the magnum opus of this whole situation,” Keishera said to Orlando Health. “‘Thank you’ doesn’t even come close to showing our appreciation to the dozens of people involved in our case.”Vlastos, meanwhile, reportedly plans to present Cassian’s case at an international medical conference in Japan in October. He could be seen on the video holding Cassian and telling him: “You are so beautiful.”“Well, how could you not be proud?” Vlastos added. “The biggest moment in time was watching the Jouberts take Cassian out of the hospital and go home.“Is there a better day?”