Posted on 08/30/2005 1:53:58 PM PDT by fortunecookie
A baby has beaten odds of 13million to one to be born fit and healthy despite having grown in her mother's abdomen, instead of her womb.
Doctors only realised Millie-An Pittman was in the wrong place when they performed an emergency Caesarean on her mum Lisa - who had originally been told she would find it hard to have children.
The baby, whose name is a play on words on "one in a million", was delivered successfully weighing 8lb 7oz in one of only 100 such cases in the world ever. She is now four weeks old.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
How could a baby reach full term outside the uterus??
HUH?
It is called an ectopic pregnancy and occurs about every 10,000 pregnancies. The chance of the baby dying is about, as they say, 13M to 1. The chance of Mom buying the farm is about one in 200.
Perhaps inappropriate to bring up under the circumstances, but an ectopic pregnancy is one of the very few circumstances in which the mother's life is genuinely threatened by the pregnancy with very little chance of the baby surviving. Thus abortion being fully justified, IMHO.
Glad they missed it on this one.
That's what I said! From the article:
"She was growing in my abdomen. The placenta had fused itself to the bowel. Apparently then there's oxygen and so forth being fed to the bowel so she was basically getting everything she wanted.
(snip)
Millie-An's position is thought to be the result of an extremely rare form of ectopic pregnancy - in which the egg develops outside the womb. Normally in such cases the fertilised egg implants itself in one of the fallopian tubes on its way to the womb.
But it can also fall out the tube and implant anywhere in the abdomen.
Wait a minute...
How in the world can it fall out of the tube and wind up in the abdomen?
Please don't answer that, anybody. I don't think that I really want to know.
for later
How in the world can it fall out of the tube and wind up in the abdomen?
It happens when there is a structural problem in the mother's tubes (like a hole or the end does not attach properly), and is more common than you would think --- usually just resulting in repeated miscarriages (or failure to fertilize).
It's nothing odd sexually going on, if that is what you were thinking.
bttt...
I don't know. It's rare. I've heard of it. I guess it depends on where the baby or placenta attachs. I heard of such a baby born healthy after attaching to the mothers stomach. But in their case, the doctors actually knew about it before the birth and she had bedrest and was admitted to hospital early on. Very often though, things go awry when an extra-uterine pregnancy occurs, as when attaching to a fallopian tube. If detected, the pregnancy is usually terminated to save the mother's life, if not, the danger is that parts can rupture killing both, or the baby at least. Kind of like when an appendix ruptures. How did the UK doctors miss this one? I hope it wasn't the failure of their strained healthcare system. (No offense to our British friends.) But sometimes one does get past them.
See #4 and #9. It can happen. It's very serious and often results in the death of baby and sometimes mother.
That's why is always better to be a Test Tube Baby.
In addition, you get a 'womb with a view'!
Perhaps inappropriate to bring up under the circumstances, but an ectopic pregnancy is one of the very few circumstances in which the mother's life is genuinely threatened by the pregnancy with very little chance of the baby surviving. Thus abortion being fully justified, IMHO.
It's a good point. And I agree. It is a necessary evil in this case, rather than lose both. Often, if a rupture is to occur, there is precious little time to save mom, too. It's sad to lose a child that way, but it is generally the only choice. They typically try to scan for such a complication in prenatal visits. Lisa and Millie An really did beat tremendous odds.
LOL, my friend had one of those. No complications.
I was once told by an og/gyn that malpractice lawyers typically gestate to full term in the lower colon. :=)
While I suspect that he might have been joking, who am I to argue with a doctor?
I'm amazed that the condition wasn't caught by an ultrasound. I thought those were routine procedures nowadays.
Typical abortion methods wouldn't work in this case. Although I am anti-abortion also, a tubal pregnancy is really an exception. Indeed why lose them both?
Well, considering how they push abortion as a 'treatment' for everything, I wouldn't be surprised. But in her case, it would have been the safer alternative. It's one of the few instances when an abortion is the best treatment. If the place that the baby or placenta attachs should rupture because of the strain, it always kill the baby and sometimes the mom, too. But they seemed oblivious to the fact that it was an extra-uterine pregnancy until after hours of failed induced labor. Yikes! What kind of prenatal care was available to her? It doesn't say how often she sought care, but this apparently passed them by. It's a true miracle, the happy ending for mom and baby. Considering that the doctors told her she would be unlikely to ever have a baby, it's funny that she didn't receive really extra cautious care. Especially since she called it a 'painful' pregnancy. She doesn't define that, but the doctors should have delved into that also.
The real danger to an ectopic pregnancy is the placenta rooting itself to one or more vital (or non-vital) organs, which doctors cannot unroot the placenta and the organ(s) is destroyed.
Luckily, the two previous cases of ectopic pregancies I have heard about, the placentas rooted to fatty tissues around an organ. One was rooted to the fatty tissues around the liver, the other was rooted to the fatty tissues around the colan.
Though both case required major surgery, but both the mothers and the babies are fine.
No, that wasn't it, LOL. Female plumbing is complicated enough as it is, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to know how an egg could get from the tubes to the abdomen. Sounds reasonable enough (I guess).
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