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11/22/2024 10:17:28 am

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Facebook's Bucket List Baby Dies in Mother's Arms Hours After Birth

Shane Michael Healy

(Photo : FACEBOOK) Shane Michael Healy

A Philadelphia baby diagnosed with a rare neural defect while in the womb, died in his mother's arms Thursday, less than four hours after he was born.


Shane Francis Haley was born with a condition called anencephaly, a birth defect where a baby is born without parts of his brain and skull.

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After the baby was diagnosed, his parents, Dan Haley and Jenna Gassew, started a Facebook page called Prayers for Shane, where over 794,800 people followed his every move in his mother's womb.

Shane was born at 2:25 a.m. at Philadelphia's Riddle Memorial Hospital.

However, after a few hours, Prayers for Shane announced that the baby died at 6:15 a.m. after meeting his entire family and being welcomed into the Catholic world.

"Baby Shane died peacefully in his Mother's arms," according to the Facebook post.

The Facebook page created by Shane's parents, showed his father and pregnant mother checking off items on a bucket list they created for the baby.

The bucket list included going to a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game, visiting the Amish community in Pennsylvania, and celebrating Father's Day at Camden, New Jersey's Adventure Aquarium.

In one of the couple's posts, it showed a photograph of them celebrating Halloween by painting a jack-o-lantern on Gassews pregnant belly, while another showed them enjoying a cheese steak in New York City's Empire State Building.

The couple, who resides outside Philadelphia, started the page Prayers for Shane, in order to increase people's awareness about the disease and to ask for their support and prayers that they be given a longer time with the infant.   

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Shane's condition was so rare that only one in every 4,800 births are affected by it.

Newborns who are diagnosed with the condition die shortly after they are born.

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