by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(June 3, 2008) In a case doctors are calling “one in a million,” a 34 year old Australian woman delivered a healthy baby girl after a nine-month ectopic pregnancy.
Durga Thangarajah was delivered by caesarean section on May 30 after spending almost nine months inside her mother’s right ovary, stretching the organ’s tissue so taut that the baby’s hair and facial features were visible through the membrane.
“It’s an extraordinarily unusual outcome and I am not aware of anyone who has seen a [full] term ovarian pregnancy as we have here,” said obstetrician Andrew Miller, from Darwin Private Hospital in the Northern Territory, to the London Telegraph.
“I deliver anything up to 520 babies a year here privately and I’ve never seen anything like this before. It truly is a miracle she got a living baby out of it – she’s extraordinarily lucky. It could have ruptured at any moment, leaving both mother and baby’s lives at risk.”
An ectopic pregnancy, in which the foetus develops outside the womb, usually involves the fertilized egg lodging in the fallopian tubes which link the ovaries to the uterus and causes severe pain and bleeding in the first few weeks of a pregnancy. Most women either miscarry or are advised to abort the baby because of the danger to their own health.
However, Mrs. Thangaraja’s pregnancy was uneventful and she did not have the early pre-natal scans that might have alerted doctors to the situation. Until he performed the caesarean, he expected to deliver a baby from the womb and would then remove a large fibroid which he was told had been detected by scans.
When he began the procedure, however, he discovered that the baby was not inside the womb but was inside the mother’s ovary. The fibroid was actually the mother’s womb.
Mrs. Thangarajah said she had no idea there was anything unusual about her pregnancy or that she had come so close to disaster. The only discomfort she had experienced was the normal morning sickness and occasional nausea as her pregnancy progressed.
“I didn’t know anything until I woke up after the caesarean and the doctors told me,” she said. “I’m feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.”
Her husband, Ravi Thangarajah, 40, said, “We came in around 6.30am and expected it to be a normal caesarean and to go like expected.
“The doctor and the pediatrician came in and told me it was like a miracle baby – you’re one of the luckiest men in the world at the moment.”
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com
In “A Life Growing Within” renowned physician Dr. Kathlene Raviele describes the miracle of life that takes place inside every pregnant woman. The perfect gift for a new mother-to-be!
