(Oregon Right to Life) — California parents received an incredible and unexpected Christmas gift this month when an appointment to remove an ovarian cyst turned into the emergency delivery of a healthy, almost full-term baby who had been developing in a rare abdominal ectopic pregnancy. Both the baby and the mother are alive and well despite the rare and often life-threatening circumstances.
41-year-old Suze Lopez of Bakersfield, California, had no idea she was pregnant when she went in for an appointment to have a 22-pound benign ovarian cyst removed, Cedars-Sanai Medical Center said in an article published on its news page earlier this month. Before the scheduled surgery, Lopez took a required pregnancy test, a routine safety precaution. When the test came back positive, the mom of a teen daughter – who had been unable to conceive again for nearly two decades – was stunned.
“I could not believe that after 17 years of praying, and trying, for a second child, that I was actually pregnant,” Lopez said, according to the report.
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Three days later, the stunned mom told her husband Andrew the incredible news. But after Suze experienced abdominal pain soon after, the couple hurried to Cedars-Sinai for care That’s when John Ozimek, DO, medical director of Labor and Delivery, and his team stabilized Lopez and ordered diagnostics, including an MRI and an ultrasound, which confirmed that Lopez was pregnant but revealed that hers was far from a typical pregnancy.
“Suze was pregnant, but her uterus was empty, and a giant benign ovarian cyst weighing over 20 pounds was taking up so much space,” Dr. Ozimek said, according to the report. “We then discovered a nearly full-term baby boy in a small space in the abdomen, near the liver, with his butt resting on the uterus. A pregnancy this far outside the uterus that continues to develop is almost unheard of.”
Cedars-Sinai explained in its news release that Lopez’ pregnancy was ectopic – that is, when the fertilized egg implants somewhere outside the mother’s uterus. Most ectopic pregnancies occur when the fertilized human egg implants in the fallopian tube. These pregnancies present a grave risk to both the mother and the baby, requiring doctors to surgically remove the embryo. Such a procedure – which anticipates but does not intend the death of the embryo in pursuit of saving the mother’s life – is different from an elective abortion in which the unborn’s death is the intended outcome. The tragic outcome of most ectopic pregnancies is not always true of abdominal ectopic pregnancies.
Dr. Guillaume Gorincour, scientific director at IMADIS Teleradiology in Marseille, previously told MedPage that abdominal pregnancies are “the only type of ectopic pregnancy that can go beyond 20 weeks gestation,” though high rates of fetal and maternal mortality still persist.
In Lopez’ case, the unexpected and dangerous circumstances of the pregnancy were handled by a team of experts to ensure the safety of both mom and baby.
Gynecological oncologist Michael Manuel, MD, of Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, was one of the team of more than two dozen experts brought on to “pull off a highly coordinated, complex delivery and surgery” for Lopez, according to the report. Manuel commented that it “was profound to see this full-term baby sitting behind a very large ovarian tumor, not in the uterus.”
“In my entire career, I’ve never even heard of one making it this far into the pregnancy,” Dr. Manuel told the hospital’s news arm. “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.”
It was far from an easy procedure. The baby was safely delivered, but immediately Lopez began to hemorrhage, anesthesiologist Michael Sanchez, MD said, according to the news release, requiring the team to deliver Lopez 11 units of blood.
Though Manuel said the surgery was “intense,” both mother and baby are reportedly in good health and recovering quickly. The baby boy, named “Ryu” after the main character in Capcom’s Street Fighter game, was born “with very few health problems, a full head of hair and weighing 8 pounds.” Cedars-Sinai described both Ryu and his mother as “feisty” despite their ordeal, and noted that Lopez was “focused on recovering quickly so she could spend time in the NICU with Ryu, her husband and teenage daughter, Kaila.” For the Lopezes, the birth of Ryu (whose middle name is “Jesse,” meaning “gift from God”) is a miracle.
“He is our gift. And Ryu and Suze are my miracles,” Andrew Lopez told the outlet “They let me in the operating room, and it was tough to watch what she was going through, and amazing to see Ryu delivered. So yes, many prayers have been answered.”
“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,” Suze Lopez added, according to the report.
While births like Ryu’s are rare, they aren’t unheard of. In December 2023, a preemie baby in France was delivered and survived after similarly implanting outside the mother’s uterus.
READ: Preemie Baby Miraculously Survives After Developing in Mother’s Abdomen
Watch Good Morning America’s video report on the Lopezes below.
