LOS ANGELES — In what doctors are calling a “medical miracle,” a Bakersfield mother gave birth to a baby boy shortly after discovering she was pregnant while preparing to have a 22-pound ovarian tumor removed.
Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles described the stunning series of events in a news release on Wednesday.
Suze Lopez discovered she was pregnant earlier this year after taking a required routine pregnancy test before her scheduled surgery to remove a 22-pound ovarian cyst, according to the hospital. Lopez, who is a nurse in Bakersfield, had dealt with the growing cyst for years.
“I was used to very irregular periods and some abdominal discomfort. I could not believe that after 17 years of praying, and trying, for a second child, that I was actually pregnant,” said Lopez in a statement included in the release.
Days later, after telling her husband Andrew about the news, Lopez, 41, experienced abdomen pain and arrived to Cedars Sinai where Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of Labor and Delivery, said he and his team began working to care for Lopez. Diagnostic images showed she was experiencing a rare abdominal ectopic pregnancy.
Ozimek said doctors “discovered a nearly full-term baby boy in a small space in the abdomen, near the liver, with his butt resting on the uterus.” He added in the release, “A pregnancy this far outside the uterus that continues to develop is almost unheard of.”
The discovery astounded doctors.
“It was profound to see this full-term baby sitting behind a very large ovarian tumor, not in the uterus,” said Dr. Michael Manuel, who works at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center. “In my entire career, I’ve never even heard of one making it this far into the pregnancy.”
“We had to figure out how to deliver the baby with a placenta and its blood vessels attached in the abdomen, remove the very large ovarian mass and do everything we could to save mom and this child,” he continued.
According to the release, about 30 experts from fields including maternal-fetal medicine specialists, gynecological oncologists, nurses, anesthesiologists and specialists were in attendance for the surgery.
During the delivery, doctors “lifted the massive dermoid cyst out of the way so Ozimek and team could quickly deliver the baby and hand him off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) staff,” the release stated.
With the baby delivered, anesthesiologist Dr. Michael Sanchez said Lopez began hemorrhaging. “I had already powered up a special machine that delivers blood products fast because every second matters. We used 11 units of blood,” Sanchez said in the release.
The baby, named Ryu Lopez, was born weighing 8 pounds and had “very few health problems,” according to Cedars Sinai.
Dr. Sara Dayanim explained in the release that a primary concern was whether the baby’s lungs would function properly. “The following day we were able to remove the breathing tube, and over the course of his two weeks with us, Ryu quickly reached all of the important benchmarks for surviving well. He defied all the odds,” she said.
According to the release, Suze Lopez “focused on recovering quickly” so she could reunite with her newborn in the NICU. She credits nurse Carmen Chavez as her “guardian angel” for her care through the entire process.
“He is our gift. And Ryu and Suze are my miracles,” said Andrew Lopez.
“I appreciate every little thing. Everything. Every day is a gift and I’m never going to waste it,” Suze Lopez said in the release. “God gave me this baby so that he could be an example to the world that God exists-that miracles, modern-day miracles, do happen.”
Ectopic pregnancies, the term for a pregnancy that exists outside of the uterus, are typically not viable and can be threatening for the pregnant mother. The blood supply at any site outside of the uterus is generally not good enough to support the growth of a healthy baby, and this will usually lead to spontaneous pregnancy termination, according to JAMA.
The American Academy of Family Physicians notes that 2.7% of pregnancy-related deaths can be attributed ruptured ectopic pregnancies.
Ectopic pregnancies within the abdomen are the only ectopic type in which the fetus may rarely survive to term. In many cases, an untreated ectopic pregnancy presents a great risk for the life of the fetus and the pregnant person.
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