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Baby Born Outside Womb After Near-Unheard-Of Pregnancy
24 Dec
Summary
- Baby Ryu developed outside mom's womb due to rare ovarian cyst.
- Pregnancy occurred outside the uterus, a situation extremely rare.
- Mom unaware of pregnancy until days before delivering baby boy.
Suze Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse from Bakersfield, California, recently experienced a pregnancy so rare it is considered "essentially unheard of." She was unaware she was pregnant with her second child, Ryu, until mere days before giving birth. Her abdomen had grown due to a basketball-sized ovarian cyst that had been monitored for years.
Doctors discovered Lopez was pregnant only when a CT scan required a pregnancy test. Further examination revealed her uterus was empty, with the full-term fetus developing in an amniotic sac within her abdomen, near her liver. This extremely rare condition, an abdominal pregnancy, typically carries a high risk of rupture and fetal mortality.
On August 18, a medical team successfully delivered Ryu, weighing 8 pounds, while simultaneously removing the cyst. Lopez required transfusions due to significant blood loss but recovered well, as did her son. Ryu, named after a baseball player and a video game character, is now thriving, and his parents consider his birth a miracle.
