Lee Budner, the attorney for the California-based couple Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, provided the update in a Monday afternoon email.
The baby, whose name is Rumi, underwent the procedure Monday morning and “is now recuperating under the loving care of his parents and his heroic team of doctors, nurses, and medical staff,” Budner wrote.
Another attorney for the parents, Sehla Ashai, confirmed that the baby and his parents remain in Dallas.
Baby Rumi has been at the center of a controversy since before he was born.
Ahmed and Gilkar, the baby’s parents, signed a surrogacy contract with a woman in Alaska, to carry the baby. When the surrogate, McKenna West, was about 20 weeks pregnant, the fetus was diagnosed with a severe congenital heart condition, hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
The parents originally opted to terminate the pregnancy, as allowed in the surrogacy contract, which The Dallas Morning News obtained a copy of. West, however, refused to undergo an abortion.
The first surgery, which the baby underwent on Monday, is called the Norwood procedure. It’s the first of three major surgeries that children with this congenital heart condition have to undergo to survive.
“This is the last update on Rumi’s health that his family intends to share,” Budner wrote in his statement. “His condition remains critical and complex, and his family seeks privacy in caring for their son on his long road to recovery.”
Meanwhile, the case’s legal complexities remain. There’s litigation in three states — Alaska, California and Texas — and West and her attorneys have raised the possibility of the surrogate making a parental claim on the child.