MOULTRIE — A baby born to a couple visiting Moultrie in December beat all the odds to overcome diaphragmatic hernia.

Sean Maharaj, a pastor from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, said he and his wife Rebekah came to Moultrie in November to be mentored by the staff at Heritage Church, who met him while on mission trips leading Vacation Bible School in Trinidad.

An invitation to come to Moultrie had been given four or five years ago, but Maharaj said the timing then was not right, with both him and Rebekah in school. He had forgotten about the invitation until he came to Sylvester last March and got in touch with Heritage Senior Pastor David Oaks. The two attended a leadership conference in South Carolina the next day.

Even after that visit in March, Maharaj said he felt the time was still not right for him and Rebekah to come here, but Heritage leaders persuaded him to come in November. Rebekah was pregnant with their second child, and coming to the U.S. would open up doors for the baby for her future education.

The couple came to Moultrie in early November after spending a few days in New York City, Maharaj said. Before leaving Trinidad and while they were in New York, however, Rebekah had symptoms that led them to believe something was not right with this pregnancy.

Sean said Rebekah went into labor and was taken to Colquitt Regional Medical Center to deliver the baby, a girl they named Ariel, at 5 a.m. Dec. 21.

“When I saw Ariel,” Maharaj said, “I realized she wasn’t crying like most babies do. I told myself then something was not right.”

Ariel was quickly taken from the delivery room for x-rays, Maharaj said. A first x-ray showed what was only believed to be an air bubble in Ariel’s diaphragm, but a second x-ray showed a loop, later found to be her intestines.

The diagnosis was diaphragmatic hernia, which Maharaj said is a condition where internal organs are pushed through a hole in the diaphragm. This causes a baby’s organs to be pushed up to where the heart and lungs are located. Doctors do not know why this happens.

Ariel was put in an incubator and taken to an ambulance for the ride to the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.

“I walked out with Ariel and I felt so helpless,” Maharaj said. “I didn’t know where she was going or who she was with. “I felt like there was nothing I could do.”

Maharaj said he and Oaks went to Augusta to be with Ariel while Rebekah stayed in Moultrie. Ariel did not initially respond to the treatments she was given, and she was placed on an Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine to help her breathe and to oxygenate her blood.

Ariel remained on the ECMO for 13 days, and Maharaj said the doctors at MCG saw an opportunity to perform surgery. The doctors successfully removed Ariel’s liver, spleen, stomach and part of her intestines from her diaphragm, and they found she had a second lung that was thought to have not properly developed. Rebekah said that discovery during the surgery was an answer to her prayers.

Prayer continued to surround Ariel following the surgery. Maharaj said the baby bled for three hours, but the bleeding stopped within 10 minutes of him posting a prayer request on the Heritage Web site. She was also taken off of a breathing machine and given oxygen only nine days after surgery, which was a milestone for her. She was taken off of oxygen completely at the end of January.

Ariel was able to come back to Moultrie without the need of a breathing apparatus or medication on Feb. 21, Maharaj said. He said she amazed the doctors with her recovery, as she was one of the most critical cases in the intensive care unit when she first arrived at MCG.

“It was amazing to see how God cares for us,” Rebekah said. “Ariel has touched a lot of lives. A lot of her nurses were in awe of what God had done for her.”

Maharaj said Ariel would have died had she been born in Trinidad instead of being born in the U.S. Trinidad does not have the facilities Ariel needed, and it reminded him how much God cares for him and his family.

“If we didn’t decide to come to Moultrie,” Maharaj said, “she would have died. We had more reasons to stay in Trinidad than to come here.”

The family will return to Trinidad at the end of March. Sean and Rebekah also have a 23-month old daughter, Sierra.