Missouri parents are left stunned after baby daughter is born without EYES: Infant has rare genetic disorder only known to affect 30 people in world
- Three-month-old Wrenley Ice was born without eyes due to a rare condition
- Experts estimate that just 30 people in the world have the same disorder
DAILY MAIL
A baby girl in Missouri was born with a genetic condition affecting just 30 people in the world – leaving her with no eyes.
Taylor Ice was overjoyed when she became pregnant last year after over a year of struggling with fertility.
Throughout her pregnancy, doctors told Mrs Ice and her husband Robert that their baby girl was perfectly healthy.
However, when Wrenley was born on November 6, 2023, her parents realized something was off.
‘I did notice she wasn’t opening her eyes, so I asked the nurse,’ Mrs Ice told local news station KFVS 12.
‘She told me, “Well, in the womb, it’s dark, so they don’t normally open their eyes right away.”‘
However, Wrenley never opened her eyes.
‘The pediatrician’s going over the baby, and he just stops with his examination and looks up at us and says, “Your daughter doesn’t have any eyes,”‘ Mrs Ice said.
‘I just looked at him and said, “Do you mean they’re small?” He goes, “No, they aren’t there.”‘
‘I just burst into tears because I just couldn’t fully process what that meant at the time.’
Though Mrs Ice had just given birth via C-section, the family drove that same day 150 miles to St Louis Children’s Hospital, where they spent nine days looking for answers.
Mr Ice said: ‘It was, for me, confusing because one diagnosis lead to another diagnosis, which was actually inside that diagnosis.’
‘It was just as lot to take in at one time. So each time we got a new diagnosis, and we were just researching.’
Finally, doctors determined that Wrenley was born with anophtalmia, a condition that caused her to not develop any eye tissue or an optic nerve – which processes visual information in the brain.
She also doesn’t produce cortisol, a stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands.
All of this caused her eyes to be sealed shut.
‘I couldn’t believe that something like that happened to us,’ Mrs Ice said.
