'Best Gift Ever': Baby Is Born After Rarest of Pregnancies

Suze Lopez holds her baby boy and marvels at the remarkable way he came into the world. Before little Ryu was born, the AP reports that he developed outside his mom's womb, hidden by a basketball-sized ovarian cyst—a dangerous situation so rare that his doctors plan to write about the case for a medical journal. Just 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occur in the abdomen instead of the uterus, and those that make it to full term "are essentially unheard of—far, far less than 1 in a million," said Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where Ryu was born. "I mean, this is really insane."

Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse who lives in Bakersfield, California, didn't know she was pregnant with her second child until days before giving birth. When her belly began to grow earlier this year, she thought it was her ovarian cyst getting bigger. Lopez experienced none of the usual pregnancy symptoms, and never felt kicks. Though she didn't have a period, her cycle is irregular and she sometimes goes years without one.

But gradually, the pain and pressure in her abdomen got worse, and Lopez figured it was finally time to get the 22-pound cyst removed. She needed a CT scan, which required a pregnancy test because of the radiation exposure. To her great surprise, the test came back positive. Lopez began feeling unwell and sought help at Cedars-Sinai. The medical team gave her an ultrasound and an MRI. The scans found that her uterus was empty, but a nearly full-term fetus in an amniotic sac was hiding in a small space in her abdomen, near her liver.

On Aug. 18, a medical team delivered the 8-pound baby, removing the cyst during the same surgery. Lopez lost nearly all of her blood, Ozimek said, but the team got the bleeding under control and gave her transfusions. "I was doing nothing but praying on the inside," husband Andrew Lopez said. "It was just something that scared me half to death, knowing that at any point I could lose my wife or my child." Instead, they both recovered well. Since, Ryu has been healthy and thriving. His parents love watching him interact with his 18-year-old sister, Kaila, and say he completes their family. With Ryu's first Christmas, Lopez describes feeling blessed beyond measure. "I do believe in miracles," she said, looking down at her baby. "God gave us this gift—the best gift ever."