This Mom Gave Birth To A Healthy Baby But When Doctors Saw Her Placenta, They Left It Inside Her

This mom gave birth to a healthy baby, but when doctors saw her placenta, they left it inside her. When one mom gave birth to a healthy baby boy, she couldn’t have been happier. However, her joy soon turned to despair when doctors saw her placenta. It was in such a state, in fact, that the medical team made the bold move to leave it inside her.

That mom was Kirsten Terlizzi, who lives in Los Gatos, California. She resides there with her husband Jeff, whom she married in October 2010. Four years after their wedding, the couple received some good news: they were expecting their second baby together.

At first, Terlizzi’s pregnancy went smoothly. At the beginning of her third trimester, however, the situation became substantially more perilous.

“Around 28 weeks in pregnancy, my ultrasound images started looking suspicious,” Terlizzi revealed in an interview with Stanford Health Care.

“They could not see a separation between my placenta, my uterus, and my bladder.”

When they examined the expectant mom, doctors couldn’t find any separation between her placenta, her uterus, and her bladder. Terlizzi was subsequently diagnosed with placenta percreta, a more severe form of placenta accreta, and the condition could have devastating consequences for her.

“I had placenta percreta. The placenta can go completely through the uterine wall out to the other side and invade nearby organs.”

During a regular pregnancy, the placenta grows within the uterus. It attaches to the uterine wall before the body safely delivers it out after birth. However, if a mother has placenta accreta, it is not that simple. The condition causes the placenta to grow rapidly and uncontrollably, embedding deeply into the uterine wall, which means doctors must manually detach it following delivery. This, in turn, often leads to severe hemorrhaging.

Sixty years ago, cases of accreta were extremely uncommon. In the 1950s, roughly one in every thirty thousand births in the United States was affected by the condition. Today, it occurs in roughly one in 500 deliveries across the country. One clear reason for this increase is the prevalence of cesarean sections. Women who have had past C-sections often carry scar tissue on their uterus, and a new placenta can bond deeply to that scar tissue. Terlizzi herself had delivered her first son via cesarean.

The hemorrhaging caused by accreta can be fatal; across the United States, roughly one in every 14 women with accreta will not survive. Needless to say, the diagnosis was terrifying. Given the gravity of her condition, Terlizzi had to deliver early at 33 weeks.

In July 2014, a team of 30 medical professionals at Stanford Hospital gathered to deliver her second son, Leo. Thankfully, the baby was completely healthy. It was only after delivery, however, that the surgeons faced the true extent of the danger.

“On July 16, 2014, at 33 weeks pregnant, I was brought into the main Stanford OR with a team of 30 multidisciplinary surgeons and nurses, and they safely delivered my son Leo. He did great. So when it came time to assess the placenta, the invasion was much worse than expected.”

The medical experts already knew Terlizzi suffered from percreta, where the placenta pushes through the uterine wall to invade adjacent internal organs. Yet when doctors examined the site, the tissue growth surpassed anything they had anticipated. As the surgical team weighed the risks of life-threatening blood loss, they faced an impossible dilemma.

In the end, they made an unprecedented call: they chose to leave the placenta inside her body.

“They stopped and closed me up with the entire placenta untouched, still inside my body,” Terlizzi shared.

“They were worried I would get an infection, that I would start spontaneously hemorrhaging, but there was also this thought that maybe the body would start to reabsorb the placenta. In an unprecedented move, they decided to abort mission on the surgery, so they stopped and closed me up with the entire placenta untouched, still inside my body. They were worried that I would get an infection, that I would start spontaneously hemorrhaging, but there was also this thought that maybe the body will start to reabsorb the placenta, maybe this will actually work out on its own. We just really didn’t know.”

For all intents and purposes, Terlizzi was in uncharted territory.

“I felt like a time bomb waiting to explode,” she admitted.

To make matters harder, three days passed before the mother could see her newborn.

“I was in the ICU for three days, and when I got transferred from ICU to F3, they must have done some serious behind-the-scenes coordination.”

Her doctors pulled strings to arrange a special midnight visit. Looking back on that moment, Terlizzi remembered how vital that reunion was.

“The empathy of my team and their ability to see that bigger picture, and to just make something happen to give me a much-needed morale boost… I had something that I needed to get better for, and to get back to.”

The road ahead remained perilous. After six weeks in the hospital, bruises began surfacing across Terlizzi’s body, and subsequent blood work confirmed the worst: she was heading toward acute liver failure.

“I stayed in the hospital for six weeks in suspense, and then one day I started developing bruises all over. A blood test revealed that I was approaching liver failure.”

Surgeons had to intervene immediately. In a grueling eight-hour procedure, the team successfully removed the placenta along with non-vital organs and repaired extensive damage to critical tissue. To keep her stable through the surgery, doctors administered 26 units of blood products.

“When Leo was seven weeks old, I underwent an emergency operation lasting eight hours. It would take the removal of some unnecessary organs, repairs and interventions to other critical ones, and the transfusion of 26 units of blood products to stabilize me.”

It had been touch-and-go, but the mother of two pulled through and embarked on a full recovery. Today, she carries deep gratitude for the care she and her son received at Stanford Health Care.

“I knew that I was at the right place, that they were going to do everything that they could possibly do.”

“You’d never even know that Leo was a preemie,” she beamed.

“He’s a feisty and determined one-year-old, and we’re pretty convinced that my mutant placenta gave him some X-Men powers. It was a tough road, but I’ve made a full recovery, and you’d never even know that Leo was a preemie. He’s a feisty and determined one-year-old, and we’re pretty convinced that my mutant placenta gave him some X-Men powers.”

Terlizzi is back to living life fully alongside her family. As a gesture of lifelong appreciation, she regularly volunteers at Stanford Hospital.

“As I’ve become a volunteer at Stanford and have learned what C-I-CARE is, as soon as I read about it, I had this moment of, ‘Oh, that’s the magic.’ They actually have this spelled out in how to do it, because they’re definitely achieving it, and achieving it in a genuine way.”

Thanks to the swift skill and dedication of her medical team, she now gets to watch her boys grow up every single day.