It matters not a whit, Missouri parents say, that their baby daughter was born without eyes. They were "chosen to help her out along the way," her father says.
Taylor Ice had just delivered her seemingly perfect baby, who had 10 fingers and 10 toes and looked absolutely fine, when she noticed something that gave her pause.
Newborn Wrenley Ice wouldn't open her tiny eyes.
The Missouri mother says she turned a nurse, who told her that babies don't always immediately open their eyes, having been in total darkness in the womb.
Taylor and Robert Ice were later told that their beautiful new daughter had a rare genetic defect. Wrenley was born without eyes.
“The pediatrician’s going over the baby and he just like stops with his examination and looks up at us and says, ‘Your daughter doesn’t have any eyes," Taylor told KFVS-TV. He "said it so bluntly, and I just looked at him and said, ‘What do you mean, they’re small?’
"No, they aren’t there," the doctor replied, Taylor recalled. "I just burst into tears because I just couldn’t fully process what that meant at the time," she told the station.
On Nov. 6, 2023, the day Wrenley was born, the family was moved transferred from Poplar Bluff to Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, where nine days of agonizing testing eventually showed the baby had PRR-12, an extremely rare genetic disorder that left Wrenley with no eyes and no optic nerves.
“This is an incredibly rare condition, there’s less than 30 cases described in the world,” Dr. Nate Jensen, a geneticist, told the station.
The condition is totally random, and had nothing to do with her parents, the couple said they were told.
“I mean we had a better chance of winning the Powerball,” Taylor said.
Taylor and Robert say they are committed to making sure that Wrenley lives her best possible life. She recently had surgery to try to unseal her eyelids and will need another. Spacers will be placed in her eye sockets to ensure the rest of her skull develops normally.
Eventually, prosthetic eyes will be implanted. There is a chance the rare disorder could affect her physical and intellectual deveopment, Jensen said.
But the parents are taking it one day, and one surgical procedure, at a time.
“It’s hard for us to visualize what life would be like if we could not see. If someone took my vision, I’d be devastated,” Taylor said. “But for her ... this is just her normal.”
The couple is working on developing Wrenley's hearing and sense of smell. She sleeps at night with one of their shirts, so she will know the scents of her mother and father.
"She’s going to have to learn how to feel her surroundings,and smell her surroundings,” her mother said.
Her father said cradling Wrenley is like "having the whole world in your hands."
He and Taylor are blessed, he said. It's as if they were "chosen to help her out along the way" and in return, "we would learn from her as well.”
A GoFundMe acount has been established to help the parents with medical costs.
Related Stories
