In a story that has stunned medical professionals and the public alike, 41-year-old nurse Suze Lopez of Bakersfield, California, delivered a healthy baby boy while the infant was hidden inside a massive ovarian cyst. The case, which the doctors plan to publish in a medical journal, is so rare that it has been described as “really insane” by Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
An Unusual Pregnancy
Lopez had never experienced the typical signs of pregnancy. She did not feel morning sickness, did not feel the baby’s kicks, and her menstrual cycle had become irregular to the point that she sometimes went years without a period. Earlier in the year, she noticed her belly had begun to grow and assumed it was her long-standing ovarian cyst enlarging. The cyst, the size of a basketball, had been monitored since her 20s after she had her right ovary and another cyst removed. Only days before giving birth did a pregnancy test come back positive.
The discovery was made at a Dodgers baseball game in August, where Lopez handed her husband Andrew a package containing a note and a onesie. “I just saw her face,” Andrew recalled, “and she just looked like she wanted to weep and smile and cry at the same time.”
Medical Investigation
After the game, Lopez went to Cedars-Sinai because she was feeling unwell. The team found she had dangerously high blood pressure and stabilized her. Blood work, an ultrasound, and an MRI were performed. The scans revealed that her uterus was empty and that a nearly full-term fetus was encased in an amniotic sac, hidden in a small space in her abdomen near her liver. Dr. Ozimek explained that the fetus was not directly invading any organs; it was mostly implanted on the sidewall of the pelvis. “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,” he said.
Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal-fetal specialist in Utah who was not involved in the case, noted that almost all pregnancies that implant outside the uterus-known as ectopic pregnancies-tend to rupture and hemorrhage if not removed. She added that most ectopic pregnancies occur in the fallopian tubes.
A 2023 medical journal article by doctors in Ethiopia described another abdominal pregnancy in which both mother and baby survived. That study highlighted that fetal mortality can be as high as 90 % in such cases, and birth defects are seen in about 1 in 5 surviving babies.
The Delivery
On August 18, a surgical team delivered the 8-pound (3.6-kg) baby while Lopez was under full anesthesia. The cyst was removed during the same operation. Dr. Ozimek reported that Lopez lost nearly all of her blood, but the team controlled the bleeding and provided transfusions. Throughout the procedure, doctors kept Andrew updated. “The whole time, I might have seemed calm on the outside, but I was doing nothing but praying on the inside,” Andrew said. “It was just something that scared me half to death, knowing that at any point I could lose my wife or my child.”
After the operation, Lopez and Andrew recovered well. Dr. Ozimek said, “It was really, really remarkable.”
The baby, named Ryu after a baseball player and a character in the Street Fighter video game series, has been healthy and thriving. Lopez and Andrew enjoy watching him interact with their 18-year-old daughter, Kaila, and say he completes their family.
A Miracle in the Making
With Ryu’s first Christmas approaching, Lopez reflects on the extraordinary journey. “I do believe in miracles,” she said, looking down at her baby. “God gave us this gift – the best gift ever.”
The case remains one of the rarest medical phenomena, with only 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occurring in the abdomen and those that reach full term being “far, far less than 1 in a million,” according to Dr. Ozimek.
Key Takeaways
- A 41-year-old nurse gave birth to an 8-pound baby hidden inside a massive ovarian cyst, a pregnancy that was only discovered days before delivery.
- The fetus was implanted on the sidewall of the pelvis, a dangerous but more manageable location than the liver.
- The surgical team removed the cyst and delivered the baby on August 18, with the mother recovering after significant blood loss and transfusions.
- Rare abdominal pregnancies have a fetal mortality rate up to 90 %, yet both mother and child survived, a fact that has stunned medical professionals.
- The family now celebrates a miracle, with the baby thriving and the parents grateful for the gift.
The story of Suze Lopez and her son Ryu serves as a powerful reminder of the incredible resilience of the human body and the remarkable possibilities that can arise even in the most unlikely circumstances.
