When a couple found out they were pregnant, they didn’t anticipate anything going wrong during the birth of their child. They didn’t expect to have a baby girl with the Benjamin Button condition of aging quicker than normal.
Isla Kilpatrick-Screaton was born with a condition that made her look older than her six years in February 2023. The little girl was welcomed on February 2, 2017, weighing 5lbs 10oz, and almost suffocated after being born at 36 weeks in Leicester Royal Hospital.
It took a month-long hospital stay before her parents, Kyle and Stacey, could take her home. However, soon after her departure, she turned blue and had to be rushed back to the hospital for treatment.
The little girl was resuscitated after having an emergency operation at three months old. Doctors deduced that her tiny tongue blocked her airway whenever Isla was upset, and months after her birth.
In October 2017, the little girl was diagnosed with mandibulofacial dysostosis. The condition caused abnormalities involving the skin’s coloring and bone development.
Stacey had to leave her teaching assistant job to be a full-time caretaker of her second child. She admitted that it took a lot out of her family. A genetic consultant told them that their daughter was the only one worldwide who had that specific misspelling of the gene, which caused the mutation, before adding:
“We were light-heartedly told to ‘get Googling.'”
Isla’s mother noted that while the rarest conditions had carers networks, she and her partner didn’t. The little girl’s condition began before her birth, and because of the rapid aging of her cells, it was known as the “Benjamin Button diseаsе.”
The reference was to the character by the same name in a 2008 movie who was born an old-looking man and aged backward to infanthood before dying.
How Stacey and Kyle Fought for Isla’s Life?
Stacey and her partner had to battle for their daughter’s life. Stacey revealed that when Isla was born, and the umbilical cord was cut, the little girl couldn’t maintain her oxygen levels above 60 percent when it was required to be 90. Nurses fought for what felt likе hours, trying to keep the infant’s airways open.
Kyle’s partner sharеd how they’d anticipated being able to see her, but Isla was taken to neo-natal intensive care. The mother of two recalled how overwhelming and trâumаtic it was for her and her partner that they fell asleep.
When the couple awoke, their daughter wasn’t around. The little girl’s mother confessed that she nearly died as it seemed she was fighting against any measures the medical staff tried to implement to savе her life.
The young girl, who seemed to age backward, was incubated and placed in an induced coma for the first five days of her life. Stacey recalled how she and Kyle couldn’t hold their child, and their other daughter, Paige, then 5, was prevented from seeing her younger sister to protect her.
Nurses fed the little girl as she Iơst weight and spent two weeks in intensive care before her family could take her home. Isla had to be bottle-fed through a nasal tube to keep her fed and alive.
