About O.E.I.S Complex

Jace, our second son, was born on December 12, 2011 with O.E.I.S Complex. No one knew the journey that was ahead that day. He was born with a healthy heart, strong lungs and a beautiful personality! The doctors were not sure what he had until they researched it for a couple of days. In the mean time Jace was sent to our children's hospital here in Fresno. A team of doctors formed and began trying to understand his condition. Jace had intestines and bladder outside of his body and an Omphalocele that needed to be put back into his body. He was born without an anus, which would require him to have a colostomy. Since they were trying to keep everything sterile, they put the lower half of his body into a plastic bag. It was so hard to see him like this. We were finally told that he had a rare condition called O.E.I.S Complex also known as Cloacal Exstrophy. Only one doctor had ever seen this before in all of his 25 plus years. It occurs in 1 out of 400,000 births of which most, sadly are aborted. Children, when treated by a specialist, can live long healthy lives, even having their own families one day.

Here is what O.E.I.S stands for:

• Omphalocele: Some of the abdominal organs protrude through an opening in the abdominal muscles in the area of the umbilical cord. The omphalocele may be small, with only a portion of the intestine protruding outside the abdominal cavity, or large, with many of the abdominal organs (including intestine, liver and spleen) protruding outside the abdominal cavity.

• Exstrophy of the bladder and rectum: The bladder is open and separated into two halves. The rectum and colon are similarly open and the segment of the rectum is placed between the bladder halves on the surface of the abdomen.
• Imperforate anus: The anus has not been formed or perforated and the colon connects to the bladder.
• Spinal defects: These defects may either be major or minor. Often times children born with cloacal exstrophy are also born with some degree of spina bifida.

We later found out that his pelvis was spread apart 8 cm wide, which is "normal" for O.E.I.S kids. Jace will need an extensive surgery to put his pelvis back into place.
Here is another link to some more information from Johns Hopkins:
https://www.hopkinschildrens.org/cloacal-exstrophy.aspx