Keishera and Greg Joubert with their son, Cassian. Photograph: Orlando Health
Florida baby ‘born twice’ after elaborate surgery involving partial delivery
Cassian Joubert was partially delivered at 25 weeks for procedure and placed back in mother’s womb before birth. A Florida infant is said to have been born twice after undergoing an innovative, probably life-saving surgery that involved a partial delivery weeks before his mother gave birth to him.
Cassian Joubert’s remarkable story was first told publicly by his parents in a May 1 video published by the Orlando Health Women’s Institute, which employs the surgeon who led the prenatal operation. Keishera and Greg Joubert recounted their experience to various US news outlets, including Good Morning America (GMA), where the mother revealed her son would mark his first year of life with two birthdays.
“We’re planning just a small party for his birthday, [the] anniversary of his surgery that saved his life – and then, of course, for his ‘birth’ birthday, we’re going to have another bash for him to celebrate a whole year,” Keishera told GMA.
The couple learned of Keishera’s pregnancy with Cassian in January 2025. They were “very joyful” that their two-year-old son, Mattias, would have a baby brother. But at 19 weeks, doctors discovered Cassian had congenital high airway obstruction syndrome (Chaos), a condition where a thick membrane blocks the fetus’s airway.
Chaos affects about one in every 50,000 births and is often deadly because it traps fluid in the lungs. Keishera’s physician, Dr. Emanuel “Mike” Vlastos, told WESH he had seen only a dozen Chaos cases in 42 years, with just three survivors. While researching the defect, Keishera kept encountering the phrase “devastatingly fatal,” she said in the Orlando Health video.
Vlastos scheduled an in-utero surgery to clear the blockage with a laser scope, but the procedure failed. The Jouberts and Vlastos then regrouped, and the doctor suggested an extraordinary measure: partially deliver Cassian via caesarean section, with only his head and arms outside the womb while the rest remained attached to the placenta. An ear, nose, and throat specialist would surgically create an airway. The surgical team would then place the baby back in the uterus, close it up, and Keishera would remain hospitalized until carrying Cassian to term.
Keishera and Cassian underwent the high-stakes procedure at Orlando Health’s Winnie Palmer hospital in June 2025, when she was 25 weeks pregnant. During the process, they took a picture of Cassian and showed it to Keishera, who called it a “little glimpse of the future.” “It was a glimpse of a little baby boy that I would eventually take home from the hospital,” she told GMA.
Keishera went into labor in August, six weeks after the successful surgery, which Orlando Health described as “rare and novel.” Cassian had to be delivered through a specialized surgical procedure allowing him to “receive life-saving support before even taking his first breath.”
Cassian began a lengthy stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In the Orlando Health video, Greg noted how his son confronted the “beginning of a long journey of his survival” while weighing only 3 pounds (1.4 kg). “But they had everything under control,” Greg said of the caregivers.
After four months and nine days in the NICU, Cassian finally went home with his family just in time for Christmas. He still requires procedures to clear the thick membrane and needs a ventilator to breathe. Nonetheless, his homecoming was a milestone relished by the parents and doctor.
“Him coming home … is the magnum opus of this whole situation,” Keishera said. “‘Thank you’ doesn’t even come close to showing our appreciation to the dozens of people involved in our case.”
Vlastos plans to present Cassian’s case at an international medical conference in Japan in October. In the video, he held Cassian and told him, “You are so beautiful.” “Well, how could you not be proud?” Vlastos added. “The biggest moment in time was watching the Jouberts take Cassian out of the hospital and go home.”
