This Baby’s Belly Kept Growing Nonstop, Then The Doctors Delivered The Alarming News To Her Parents

Steve Tenney, a U.S. Army veteran and an 18-year member of the Keene Police Department, hadn’t seen a doctor in at least a decade, save for a stitch or two. He had never been seriously ill, nor had he ever spent a night in the hospital. At 40 years old, he stood as the epitome of robust health, keeping in shape and helping coach middle school football at his alma mater, Monadnock Regional High.

Yet on September 8, after a week-long battery of physical and psychological tests confirmed he was in peak physical condition, surgeons at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, operated on his perfectly functioning liver. They carefully resected roughly 20 percent of the organ, placed the rest back into his body, and stitched him up.

“I woke up that afternoon and felt like a truck had run over me,” Tenney recalled.

Earlier that week, Tenney and a piece of his liver stepped in to save the life of a four-month-old girl he had never even met.

Sarah St. James, from Bourne, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, had enjoyed an uncomplicated pregnancy. Her daughter, Sloane, arrived in April, seemingly thriving as the second child of Sarah and Chris St. James, alongside their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Carter. Sarah works as an occupational therapist, while Chris works in IT for Keolis Commuter Services.

When Sloane turned two months old, her parents noticed a subtle shift: her skin grew increasingly jaundiced, and her belly rounded out in a way they began calling a “Buddha belly.” Though she continued nursing normally and hit every early developmental benchmark, her parents felt an unsettling intuition taking hold.

“Chris and I were like, ‘Something’s just not right,’” St. James said.

Passing on their local clinic, they booked Sloane’s routine four-month checkup at Boston Children’s Hospital on August 8, simply hoping the pediatric specialists would put their anxieties to rest. Instead, the medical team took one look at Sloane, and the alarm bells rang immediately.

The diagnosis soon came back: biliary atresia, an uncommon liver disease where the bile ducts are dangerously narrow, blocked, or missing entirely. When caught very early in infancy, it can sometimes be managed without major surgical intervention. For Sloane, however, the disease was already too advanced, hurtling toward stage four. Her only path forward was an immediate liver transplant.

“Here we are thinking we’re bringing her in for peace of mind, and instead it was devastating,” St. James said. “Her jaundice wasn’t going away, and at the same time she developed a bigger belly. You have a glimmer of the worst thing, but then you say it‘s not going to be the worst thing, I think.”

Sloane was placed on the deceased-donor registry, but her condition deteriorated without pause. She was discharged home for six days near the tail end of August, only to be rushed right back to Boston Children’s. With Labor Day weekend drawing closer, the clinical reality set in: they couldn’t afford to wait on the standard list. They needed a living donor—a rare intervention used in only about ten percent of pediatric cases.

“We knew we weren’t going home again after those six days,” St. James said. “She was deteriorating rapidly.”

Living-donor guidelines are notoriously rigorous: the volunteer must be a relative or family acquaintance, the decision entirely uncoerced, and the candidate must clear extensive psychological screening alongside a biological match.

“There are a lot of risks involved, a lot of ethical things that go into it,” St. James explained.

Tenney was connected to the family through his brother, Jake, who lived in Bourne near the Cape Cod Canal and counted Chris and Sarah among his close circle. While Steve and his wife, Aubrey, had crossed paths with the St. Jameses at casual get-togethers, they were mere acquaintances.

When word of Sloane’s critical state spread across community circles and a GoFundMe campaign, Tenney stepped forward. Unlike members of Sloane’s immediate family, Tenney’s blood type aligned with hers.

That compatibility was only the first milestone in an exhaustive screening gauntlet. Because adult living donors are managed through Lahey Hospital, Tenney filled out an extensive preliminary health assessment. After reviewing his chart, the transplant coordinators reached out; he was an eligible candidate.

Tenney and his wife sat down to discuss the realities of the decision. Donating meant taking weeks away from the Keene Police Department, where he served as a lieutenant. Having rarely taken a sick day throughout his career, he had accrued plenty of leave, and a recent transition to daytime administrative duties offered added flexibility.

“Fortunately, here I was in a good position,” Tenney said. “My wife and I talked, and it was really a no-brainer. It’s something you have to do as a human being. It’s a baby; you have to help a baby if the baby’s in need.”

He began initial blood draws and scans at Cheshire Medical Center before checking in at Burlington for full-scale evaluations. To ensure rigorous care, transplant teams vet only one prospective living donor at a time. Because Sloane’s window was closing so fast, the standard multi-week assessment was compressed into just seven days.

Tenney arrived at Lahey on September 1, enduring a grueling run of CT scans, MRIs, and a targeted liver biopsy. The lab drew dozens upon dozens of blood vials, and specialists generated 3D anatomical models of his liver, coordinating precise vascular measurements with an advanced laboratory in Germany. Every vessel and vein had to align down to the millimeter with the infant’s anatomy.

“The number of vessels and veins have to match. If I have too many, it’s almost too much to be able to close them off,” Tenney said.

He admitted the weight of it all hit hardest during the first night of the workup, when the flood of surgical data felt overwhelming.

“At first I was nervous, but excited. It got better as the days ticked off,” he said as the green light grew closer.

Back in Boston, Sloane was growing weaker by the hour. Her family held their breath, praying she would stay stable long enough to endure the operating room.

“Sending her into that OR was like an out-of-body experience, because you never want to hand your child over to an anesthesiologist not knowing the outcome,” St. James remembered.

On the morning of September 8, two elite surgical teams synchronized their operations across Burlington and Boston. The transport had to be timed to the minute: the donated liver segment needed to arrive in Boston just as surgeons completed removing Sloane’s failing organ.

Tenney kept digital scans of his healthy organ on his phone. In stark contrast, St. James described Sloane’s liver as shriveled, dark, and lifeless.

Both operations succeeded without complication. The transplanted graft will grow alongside Sloane throughout her life, while Tenney’s remaining liver tissue will naturally regenerate back to full volume.

Nearly two months on, Sloane remains on an intensive immunosuppressive and anti-infection regimen, but she is nursing again. Her parents make regular visits back to Boston Children’s to dial in her dosages, an anticipated step in post-transplant care. While her doctors cautioned that minor roadblocks are part of recovery, her progress has been remarkably steady, and the long-term one-year survival rate stands above 95 percent.

“Sloane never stopped smiling,” St. James shared. “The doctors say she’ll be able to do anything that a normal little girl would do, but it’s been a huge adjustment for our family.”

Tenney spent five days inpatient before resting at a local hotel for a brief recovery window, returning home the following week. Rebuilding his endurance took patience, but he was back on duty full-time shortly thereafter and took a trip down to the Cape to hold Sloane in his arms.

“He’s our hero. He’s Sloane’s hero. He reached out right when this all started,” St. James said. “That just speaks to his character. It reminds us that there are great people in the world.”

Looking back on the scars and the recovery, Tenney wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again.

“It’s something I would tell people to do if they’re in that position. I have no regrets,” Tenney reflected. “For what you give, it’s a very rewarding process in what you get back. It was incredible.” “I’d like to think he was a little proud, you know, of what he had done,” St. James added quietly. “He deserves to be. And him holding her—it’s just a new bond created for life.”