‘Miracle Baby' doing great after receiving Stanford hospital treatment for rare heart condition

Two-month-old Liam Silva is now known around Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford as the miracle baby.

"He's doing great. He's surprised us all," said his mother Linda Luna.

Weeks before he was born, an ultra-sound showed Liam had a rare and usually fatal heart condition called Ebstein's Anomaly. Two of his heart valves leaked.
    
"It decreases circulation to his body. It steals blood from his body and just goes backwards. And that's highly associated with fetal death," said one of Liam's doctors Theresa Tacy, a pediatric cardiologist.

"We were very afraid. We didn't know what to think. Every day it was like are we going to bring our son home or are we going to bury our son. We were mourning at the same time we were happy," said Luna.
 
The last two babies at Stanford with the very same heart abnormality died. Medical statistics show 90 percent of infants worldwide don't survive.
         
But pediatric cardiologist Dr. Theresa Tacy came up with a never-been-tried before medical strategy for this condition.

She put the mother on oxygen, 12 hours a day, seven days a week to relax the blood vessels in the lungs of the fetus. It started working.

"Every time I would put on the oxygen, he would start moving around like crazy. Like he loved it," said Luna.

Liam was born four weeks early and had to undergo an extremely delicate surgery to repair the heart defect.

Doctors say Baby Liam will have to see a cardiologist regularly. But he should be able to live a normal, healthy life.

"We were hoping and praying for a miracle and we got one," said Luna.