Our miracle baby refused to die .

Born with his brain outside his skull, the odds were stacked against Bentley – but his life was saved by a 3D printer

ABOVE: Despite his challenges Bentley never stops smiling. RIGHT: Parents Sierra and Dustin Yoder with Bentley. They were determined to savour every second with him.

HE WAS the baby they’d been so excited to meet – the infant who kicked and f luttered in her womb when she played music, the sibling they’d wanted their toddler son to grow up alongside. But when Sierra Yoder and her husband, Dustin, drove to the hospital for the birth they had only one outfit for their little boy: a onesie with matching pants and fuzzy socks. There was no car seat to bring him home in, no lovingly prepared nursery filled with soft toys and a cosy cot.

Baby Bentley needed only one thing: a burial outfit. He had encephalocele, a rare and often fatal defect in which a baby’s brain protrudes from the skull in the womb and the bones fail to form properly around it.

His condition was incompatible with life, doctors said, and he’d probably be dead within minutes of being born.

But the tiny tot from Sugarcreek, a small town in Ohio, USA, had other ideas. Now seven months old, he’s meeting milestones, his proud parents say, and grins constantly. “If he smiled any bigger,” Sierra says, “it would probably cover his whole face.”

Bentley’s story is one of scientific wonder and medical ingenuity involving a 3D printer and a team of gifted surgeons. But it’s also one of parents who refused to give up on their child – and a baby who refused to die.

SIERRA and Dustin (now both 25) grew up together. Their moms had been friends since high school and introduced them when they were two years old. They were married by the time they were 21 and became parents to Beau two months after their wedding.

In December 2014 they decided to try for baby number two and a month later they were expecting. Everything seemed fine – until they went for the 22-week scan to find out their baby’s sex. The doctor squeezed gel onto Sierra’s stomach and passed the wand over her bump – then went quiet. “He said there was something wrong with the baby’s head,” Sierra recalls. “Maybe he was missing a crown. Maybe something more. I started bawling immediately. I didn’t think he’d make it.”

She was sent for further tests and the prognosis wasn’t good. “The doctors told us, ‘If he makes it he’ll have no life whatsoever.’ They encouraged us to abort and we decided to do so there and then. We didn’t want our baby to come into the world and suffer.”

A date was set for the abortion: 26 June 2015. “But the night before the procedure I told Dustin I couldn’t do it,” Sierra says. “He breathed a big sigh of relief. He was

‘There was an urgency to put him in our arms before he died’