Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse who lives in Bakersfield, California, did not know she was pregnant with her second child until days before giving birth, according to the Associated Press. When her belly began to grow earlier this year, she believed it was her ovarian cyst getting bigger. She had been monitored for years, including after doctors removed her right ovary and another cyst, and she said she experienced none of the typical pregnancy signs, such as morning sickness or feeling kicks.
Doctors said imaging eventually helped reveal what Lopez’s symptoms had concealed. After Lopez decided she needed the cyst removed, she required a CT scan that in turn required a pregnancy test because of radiation exposure, and the test result came back positive. She told her husband, Andrew Lopez, about the pregnancy at a Dodgers baseball game in August by handing him a package with a note and a onesie.
Soon afterward, Lopez sought care at Cedars-Sinai, where the medical team found dangerously high blood pressure and stabilized her, the Associated Press reported. The team then conducted blood work and performed an ultrasound and an MRI, which showed that her uterus was empty but that a nearly full-term fetus in an amniotic sac was hiding in a small space in her abdomen near her liver. Dr. Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai, described the implantation as not directly invading organs; he said it appeared to be mostly on the sidewall of the pelvis, though he noted that location could still be dangerous.
Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal-fetal specialist in Utah who was not involved in the case, said most ectopic pregnancies that implant outside the uterus lead to rupture and hemorrhage if they are not removed. She said the most common type of ectopic pregnancy occurs in the fallopian tubes, and the medical team’s assessment placed Lopez’s case in the rarer category of abdominal implantation. The Associated Press report also noted that a 2023 medical journal article by doctors in Ethiopia described an abdominal pregnancy in which the mother and baby survived, and that article pointed to fetal mortality as high as 90% in such cases while reporting birth defects in about 1 in 5 surviving babies.
When the case moved to surgery, the team prepared to address both the pregnancy and the underlying cyst. On Aug. 18, doctors delivered the baby while she was under full anesthesia and removed the cyst during the same operation, the report said. The Associated Press said Lopez delivered an 8-pound (3.6-kilogram) baby and lost nearly all of her blood, but the team controlled the bleeding and gave her transfusions. The team also continually updated Andrew Lopez about what was happening during the procedure, and he said he was praying because he feared he could lose both his wife or his child at any point.
Afterward, Lopez and her son recovered well, and the baby—named Ryu after a baseball player and a character from the Street Fighter video game series—was described as healthy and thriving. The report said Lopez’s son interacts with his 18-year-old sister, Kaila, and that his parents say he completed their family. With Ryu’s first Christmas approaching, Lopez said she views the outcome as a miracle, telling the Associated Press, “God gave us this gift — the best gift ever.”