Australia Records the World’s First Birth After Full-term Ovarian Pregnancy

Australia records the world’s first birth after full term ovarian pregnancy

Australia has recorded the world’s first birth after a full-term ovarian pregnancy. A baby girl was born to Meera Thangarajah in Northern Territory Thursday at the Darwin Private Hospital.

The girl has been dubbed a miracle as she has survived the ovarian pregnancy. Doctors say it is one of the rarest variations of ectopic pregnancies and it is generally beset with life-threatening complications, Rebekah Cavanagh reports in the Northern Territory News.

After a two-hour delicate operation saw doctors carefully cut the baby girl from her mother’s right ovary.

Recovering in her hospital bed last night, Mrs Thangarajah, 34, from Nakara in Darwin's northern suburbs, fought to hold back tears as she told how she had no idea her pregnancy was abnormal.

If she had, possibly doctors would have advised her to abort as ectopic pregnancies carry a high risk with them. "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.''

Obstetrician Andrew Miller told the Northern Territory News he was stunned when he went to perform a caesarean section on Mrs Thangarajah and found the baby squeezed into the right ovary.

He said she was lucky the ovary had not ruptured as the baby grew and stretched the skin, adding that the skin was so thin he could see the baby's hair and facial features through it.

"It could have ruptured at any moment, leaving both mother and baby's lives at risk,'' he said.

Dr Miller said it was a medical phenomenon.

"This form of pregnancy is rare enough, but to have it go full term is unheard of,'' he said. "I have never come across it in any hospital.

"It truly is a miracle she got a living baby out of it -- she's extraordinarily lucky.''

Dr Miller said Mrs Thangarajah's egg didn't travel down the fallopian tube and into the uterus, instead staying in the ovary for the full term.

He said most women whose egg begins to fertilise outside of the womb present themselves to hospital with severe pain and bleeding in the early weeks of their pregnancy and they have no choice but to abort the baby or risk their own life.

But Mrs Thangarajah had no symptoms apart from the usual morning sickness, discomfort and nausea.

And her ultrasounds at regular check-ups never showed anything unusual.

Source-Medindia
GPL/L