California baby born after extremely rare pregnancy, defies all odds – National

Suze Lopez, a 41-year-old ER nurse in Bakersfield, Calif., delivered her baby, Ryu, in August following an ectopic pregnancy. The newborn also developed behind an ovarian cyst.

Ectopic pregnancies are rare and pose serious health risks, occurring in just one in 30,000 pregnancies, doctors at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles said, in a news release detailing the birth.

Dr. John Ozimek, who leads the hospital’s labour and delivery ward, told the Associated Press that pregnancies like Lopez’s, which occur outside the womb and reach full term, “are essentially unheard of — far, far less than one in a million.”

“I mean, this is really insane,” he said.

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Lopez discovered she was pregnant days before giving birth, CBS News reported, adding that when her belly began to grow, she thought it was her ovarian cyst beginning to protrude. Doctors had been monitoring the mass for almost two decades after removing her right ovary.

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According to the U.S. outlet, Lopez, who has another child, did not experience any of the usual pregnancy symptoms and never felt the baby kicking. She reported not having a period but said it was not unusual for her to go years without one.

Lopez and her husband went about their daily lives, even travelling abroad, unaware of her pregnancy, until the pain in her abdomen became severe enough that she decided to have the 22-pound cyst removed. A routine pregnancy test before a CT scan came back positive in August.

Soon after, Lopez fell ill and was admitted to the hospital for high blood pressure. Testing, including blood work and an MRI scan, showed an empty uterus and an almost full-term baby in amniotic fluid nestled in her abdomen, close to her liver.

“It did not look like it was directly invading any organs,” Ozimek said. “It looked like it was mostly implanted on the sidewall of the pelvis, which is also very dangerous but more manageable than being implanted in the liver.”

On Aug. 18, a team of 30 doctors delivered the eight-pound baby while Lopez was under anesthesia and removed the cyst. Lopez lost nearly all of her blood during the procedure, Ozimek said, but doctors were able to control the bleeding and give her transfusions.

“Maternal-fetal medicine specialists, gynecological oncologists, nurses, anesthesiologists and a host of specially trained surgical technicians filled the operating room to near capacity,” the hospital said.

“The whole time, I might have seemed calm on the outside, but I was doing nothing but praying on the inside,” Andrew Lopez, her husband, said.

“It was just something that scared me half to death, knowing that at any point I could lose my wife or my child.”

Both Lopez and her baby survived and recovered well.

Ryu’s parents said their newborn is the answer to years of praying for a second child.

Andrew Lopez said that is why they chose “Jesse” for Ryu’s middle name. It means “gift from God.”

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