In what doctors in Los Angeles are calling a “medical miracle,” a 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 Medical Center 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, California, had dealt with the growing cyst for years.
“I knew that I was pregnant for about five days,” Lopez said in an interview that aired on “Good Morning America” Thursday morning. “I wasn’t even believing it at first, because I have ovarian problems, so I was thinking it was a false positive.”
Husband Andrew Lopez added, “I thought she was joking, and it didn’t really sink in until I actually got a little gift from her.”
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After telling her husband about the news, Suze Lopez, 41, said she began experiencing abdominal pain and headed to Cedars-Sinai. There, Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery, began working with his team to care for her.
Diagnostic images showed Suze Lopez was experiencing a rare abdominal ectopic pregnancy, Ozimek said.
“He was located outside of the uterus, posterior to this big ovarian mass in the abdomen, so his head was up under the left side of the abdomen, under the spleen,” Ozimek said in an interview with “GMA.” “It makes sense that she didn’t know, because the baby was in her abdomen, behind the mass, and it just looked like the mass was growing.”
In the Cedars-Sinai press release, Ozimek explained that “a pregnancy this far outside the uterus that continues to develop is almost unheard of.”
Cedars-Sinai – PHOTO: The Lopez family with baby Ryu in the Cedars-Sinai NICU.
The discovery astounded doctors.
“It was profound to see this full-term baby sitting behind a very large ovarian tumor, not in the uterus,” Dr. Michael Manuel, who works at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, said in the release. “In my entire career, I’ve never even heard of one making it this far into the pregnancy.”
He continued, “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.”
According to the release, about 30 experts — 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 with being her “guardian angel” for her care through the entire process, the release stated.
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“Miracles happen, and he definitely was a miracle for us,” Andrew Lopez told “GMA” in an interview.
Suze Lopez said in the release, “I appreciate every little thing. Everything. Every day is a gift and I’m never going to waste it. 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.
