Rare occurrence! Doctors deliver baby girl grown inside abdominal cavity instead of uterus

New Delhi: In a rare occurrence, doctors at a private facility in New Delhi delivered a newborn girl who had developed within the abdominal cavity instead of the uterus.

In normal pregnancies, a fertilised egg grows inside the uterus with the placenta, which supplies nutrition and oxygen to the growing baby, connected to the uterine wall, but in this case, it was attached to the bowel.

Anjali Chaudhary, obstetrics and gynaecology, Aarogya Hospital said, ‘In cases where the fertilised egg grows inside the abdominal cavity, it does not survive beyond four or five months, but in this case, it was a full-term pregnancy and the baby was delivered through a caesarean surgery performed on Monday morning. The baby’s weight was 2.65 kg.’

The problem complicated further by the fact that the condition was unidentified throughout the six ultrasounds in the woman’s pregnancy.

‘The woman came to us during her seventh month of pregnancy and the earlier ultrasounds that she had undergone in her hometown did not detect the issue. The baby was on the right side and was putting pressure on her right ureter. She was passing pus in the urine due to that condition and we had to put a stent in her ureter to manage the condition,’ Chaudhary said.

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At the time of the stent placement, the doctors performed a thorough ultrasound of the stomach but were unable to identify the problem. The scans, however, indicated that the baby was laying bottom first rather than head first as expected, the doctor added.

‘The decision was taken to deliver the baby through a C-section. When we did the incision, we found that the baby was in the abdominal cavity and we knew it was going to be a serious surgery,’ she said.

The placenta was found attached to the bowel after the baby was taken out and there was ‘torrential bleeding’ while the doctors tried to remove it. To compensate for the blood loss, the woman was given four units of new frozen plasma and three units of blood, she said.

After 12 hours in the ICU, the baby was given over to the attendants and after 24 hours, the lady was transferred to a ward. The mother and baby are doing well today and will be released on Friday, Chaudhary further stated. This was the woman’s second baby. She had a baby boy via C-section.