A woman has given birth to a healthy baby who grew outside her womb, attached instead to her bowel. Doctors at the Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham UK were amazed when they delivered the four and a half pound baby girl by Caesarean last week.
The mother has been told her chances of having a child were remote, because of damage to her fallopian tubes. But an embryo must have worked its way through one of the damaged tubes, where it started growing in a blanket of fatty tissue above the abdominal cavity. A wall then developed around it, so that the pregnancy appeared normal on an ultrasound scan. Doctors diagnosed the empty womb as a benign tumour and had no idea the pregnancy was ectopic until they operated on the pregnant woman. 'I had the shock of my life', said obstetrician Dr Lawrence Mascarenhas, who performed a Caesarean because the baby was lying in a transverse position. 'I gave the baby just a five per cent chance of surviving, and there was a one-in-ten chance the mother wouldn't come through the ordeal'.
But the 'miracle' baby is perfectly healthy, and her mother is recovering well following surgery to remove the placenta.
Sources and References
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Healthy baby survived outside mother's womb
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Baby beats odds
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'Miracle' baby grew on mother's bowel
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