In a remarkable medical development out of California, a woman preparing for surgery to remove a large cyst received an astonishing revelation. A routine pre-operative pregnancy test yielded a positive result, quickly leading to the discovery that she was, in fact, full-term pregnant. The baby had been remarkably concealed within her abdomen, entirely hidden behind the very cyst she was scheduled to have removed.

In a complex and coordinated medical feat, a team of approximately 30 healthcare professionals at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles successfully performed a rare dual procedure for Suze Lopez. The 41-year-old emergency room nurse from Bakersfield underwent simultaneous surgery to remove a cyst and deliver her baby.

According to a statement from Cedars-Sinai, Lopez experienced a severe post-delivery hemorrhage immediately after childbirth. Her medical team successfully stabilized the critical situation, which necessitated an extensive transfusion of 11 units of blood.

Born weighing 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) and distinctive for a full head of hair, the newborn was swiftly transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) immediately after delivery. Despite this rapid transfer, his attending physicians confirmed he was remarkably healthy, given the circumstances.

In a video accompanying the announcement, Dr. Sara Dayanim, a neonatologist with Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s, conveyed her profound astonishment at the child’s remarkable journey. She emphatically stated, “He’s defied all odds,” underscoring an extraordinary outcome.

The unexpected discovery of baby Ryu unfolded as his mother, Lopez, prepared for a major surgical procedure. She was slated to undergo an operation to remove a substantial 22-pound (9.9 kg) ovarian cyst, a noncancerous growth that had been developing over several years.

Accustomed to irregular menstrual cycles and persistent abdominal discomfort, Lopez had no reason to anticipate a positive result when she underwent a pregnancy test prior to a scheduled surgery. The unexpected news was later revealed to her husband, Andrew, during a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game, where the couple commemorated the announcement with a selfie featuring a Dodgers-branded baby onesie.

However, later during the game, Lopez developed intense abdominal pain, necessitating an immediate transfer to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Lopez arrived at the hospital with very high blood pressure, and as medical staff set about treating it, they also ran blood work and body scans, including an MRI and ultrasound. That’s when they discovered that Lopez was carrying a rare abdominal ectopic pregnancy. The baby was situated near the liver, with his back half resting on top of the uterus.

“It was the baby growing in her abdomen behind the mass that was pushing everything out,” Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of Labor and Delivery and the Maternal-Fetal Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai, said in the video. “So that’s the reason she didn’t know she was pregnant.”

He added that “a pregnancy this far outside of the uterus that is living is pretty much unprecedented.”

An ectopic pregnancy, a condition where a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, affects approximately two percent of all pregnancies. Regardless of its specific location within the body, every ectopic pregnancy presents a grave threat to maternal life.

The primary danger stems from the potential for organ rupture, which can lead to catastrophic internal bleeding and, subsequently, life-threatening shock due due to blood loss. Crucially, an ectopic pregnancy cannot be safely relocated to the uterus. Consequently, professional medical guidance mandates treating the condition by terminating the pregnancy, typically through medication or surgical intervention.

The vast majority of ectopic pregnancies — about 95% — occur in a fallopian tube, a tube that shuttles eggs from an ovary to the uterus. Abdominal ectopic pregnancies, by comparison, occur in only about 1% of ectopic pregnancy cases.

If an ectopic pregnancy escapes notice — as in this case — it’s very improbable that the fetus would develop normally outside the uterus. Thus, fetal death is likely.

That said, the medical literature includes a handful of unusual cases in which abdominal ectopic pregnancies were discovered very late in gestation and ultimately resulted in the birth of healthy babies.

In Lopez’s case, “we had to figure out how to deliver the baby with a placenta and its blood vessels attached in the abdomen, remove the very large ovarian mass and do everything we could to save mom and this child,” Dr. Michael Manuel, a gynecological oncologist at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, said in the statement. And in the end, they were successful.

Lopez, who has a teenage daughter, had been hoping for a second pregnancy for years.

“I could not believe that after 17 years of praying, and trying, for a second child, that I was actually pregnant,” she said in the statement. “I appreciate every little thing. Everything. Every day is a gift and I’m never going to waste it.”