TAMPA — Tampa Bay Buccaneers fullback Evan Rodriguez and his newlywed wife, Olivia, eagerly anticipated the July trip to the doctor's office to find out the gender of their unborn child.
If it was a girl, they would name her Layla Sky because "I'm always looking at the sky," said Rodriguez, 26, who joined the Bucs last season.
But the sonogram tech had a dire message: "I don't want to make you guys nervous or anything, but her head doesn't look all there," Evan remembered hearing.
Doctors confirmed it was a rare birth defect known as anencephaly, in which a baby develops without parts of its brain and skull.