Abrazo Arrowhead Campus recently announced the birth of baby Benzi, a miraculous delivery led by Dr. Ravi Gunatilake, Maternal Fetal Medicine, Valley Perinatal Services and Abrazo Health.

This is the story of 35-year-old Bendu Kiazolu, who always wanted lots of kids. Despite being told at age 19 that she couldn’t get pregnant, Kiazolu gave birth to her first son, Bailey, eight years ago.

“After I had my son, I kept wanting to have more kids and more kids because he was such a blessing to us,” Bendu stated in a press release.

Bendu and her husband endured the loss of five more babies. She had three miscarriages. Then in 2023, she became pregnant and faced another devastating loss.

“When the nurse told me they couldn’t detect a heartbeat, I just cried and cried, I couldn’t believe this was happening over and over again,” Kiazolu stated. Her baby was stillborn at 24 weeks.

Later that same year, she became pregnant again with a baby girl, and that’s when she started seeing Gunatilake, who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine both at Valley Perinatal Services and Abrazo Arrowhead Campus.

Despite his close supervision, her baby was born prematurely, at 31 weeks, and died. Gunatilake said he suspected the baby’s death was the result of Bendu’s immune system mistakenly attacking the baby through the placenta, a rare condition known as Gestational Alloimmune Liver Disease.

When Bendu became pregnant for the sixth time last year, Gunatilake said he had to do something different, what he called a “creative and highly individualized approach to her care.”

If you were to characterize Bendu’s clinical situation when she started this pregnancy with us, it was probably already a one in a million pregnancy if not one in five million so a very, very challenging and unique situation because currently we don’t have a single drug or medication that really blocks mom’s immune system,” Gunatilake stated.

After consulting with experts from around the world, Gunatilake and the Abrazo Arrowhead NICU team implemented an aggressive treatment plan with Intravenous Immunoglobulin infusions, steroids and Hydroxychloroquine — all to suppress mother’s immune system and save the life of her sixth child.

“When Dr. G told me he could start IVIG on me, it was on a Friday, and he suggested I begin the following Monday. I told him I want to start now, today! I drove straight over to the NICU that day for my first 18-hour infusion,” Kiazolu stated.

Gunatilake credited her because these medications and therapies have significant side-effects, and she experienced them and fought through them knowing they were helping her baby.

During one of those marathon 18-hour infusions in the Abrazo Arrowhead NICU in March Bendu’s water broke. At 32 weeks it was time.

“My son came out right there in the NICU, he was ready. He came out only three pounds, but he was breathing on his own, he was just a blessing: he came out little, but he came out perfect,” Kiazolu stated.

Bendu said she hopes her story inspires other women to never give up. It was a long journey, she said.

“Seeing Bendu and her husband absolutely devastated and crying in the NICU during that last pregnancy, as they watched their child die that night, experiencing that emotion, and then finally being able to see her and her husband with their child at this most recent pregnancy, that was the most memorable thing for me,” Gunatilake said.

Kiazolu said she wants to have one more baby, but Gunatilake wants her to wait a year.

“This extraordinary story reflects both the resilience of patients like Bendu and her family and the expertise of Dr. Gunatilake and our NICU hospital teams,” says Stephen Garner, CEO of Abrazo Arrowhead.