On a brisk March morning in 2024, Elizabeth Hansen and her husband, Chris, nervously woke up in Minneapolis rather than their own bed more than 240 miles away in Des Moines, Iowa. For Elizabeth, a middle school English teacher, the pre-dawn nerves were not the typical anxious butterflies before the first day of school. Instead, this 4 a.m. wake-up call marked the morning she and her unborn son, Santiago, would undergo surgery to repair the little one’s severe spina bifida before his June due date.
“Ultimately, I just kept praying that Santiago would handle the surgery well and that he would be able to stay inside the womb as long as possible after the operation,” Elizabeth recalled.
Baby Santiago’s delicate in-utero spina bifida repair procedure would be the 100th performed at the Midwest Fetal Care Center (MWFCC), a collaboration between Allina Health and Children’s Minnesota.
