Baby born without skull in the back of his head defies odds

Even as Ben and Alyssa Riedhead were expecting their first child, they were planning for his funeral.

Instead of clothes, they were picking out a casket. Instead of how to baby him, they were thinking about where to bury him.

Their unborn son had been diagnosed with encephalocele. It's a rare condition where the bones of the skull don't completely close. As a result, the brain starts developing outside the skull.

One out of every 10,000 babies born in the United States each year have this condition. And only half of them survive.

"Today we were supposed to mourn the death of our child," Alyssa Reidhaed posted on her blog Monday. "But instead we spent four glorious hours with him, holding him, playing with him, reading to him, and loving him."

(CNN)