In a rare medical anomaly, a woman was shocked to learn she was 23 weeks pregnant with the baby growing inside her bowel.
According to the case study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the 37-year-old sought medical treatment after 10 days of severe abdominal pain and worsening bloat, but scans revealed she was pregnant with a “normally formed” fetus.
However, she was experiencing an abdominal ectopic pregnancy, when a fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus and instead in the abdominal cavity, which only accounts for approximately 1% of ectopic pregnancies.
Ectopic pregnancies — which make up less than 2% of all pregnancies and more commonly occur in the fallopian tubes — are a danger to the mother, potentially causing internal bleeding, tube rupture or shock, and rarely result in a surviving fetus.
Symptoms often include vaginal bleeding, abdominal pain, dizziness and weakness.
According to the case study, because of potential complications — such as hemorrhaging or fetus death — the mother was transferred to a tertiary hospital where the baby was delivered at 29 weeks and placed in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Infants are viable at 24 weeks gestation, but the rate of survival is only about 60% to 70%.
At 28 weeks, however, the chances of surviving are much higher, about 80% to 90%.
After approximately three months postpartum, both the baby and mom were discharged.
This is not the first time doctors have found an embryo growing in an odd place — a pediatrician once took to TikTok to share a case report of a fetus growing in a woman’s liver.
“I thought I had seen it all,” Dr. Michael Narvey, of the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, said in the clip.
“We see these sometimes in the abdomen but never in the liver,” he added.
“This is a first for me.”
