The director of the obstetrics department of the hospital where Ryu was born calls his birth ‘really crazy’. “Only 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occur in the abdomen rather than the uterus,” says Dr. John Ozimek. “And pregnancies that make it to term in the abdomen are actually completely unheard of. Even rarer than one in a million,” he told the AP news agency.
Even before the pregnancy, Suze suffered from a so-called ovarian cyst, a fluid-lined cavity in the ovary. Doctors had been monitoring this for years and another cyst had previously been removed.
Positive pregnancy test
At first, Suze and her husband Andrew thought the cyst was growing when her belly started to grow. They simply continued with their lives.
But the pain and pressure, which she thought was the cyst, increased. She went to the hospital to have the cyst removed, but that required a CT scan. And to make it, she first had to take a pregnancy test because of the radiation. To her surprise, the test was positive and the removal of the ‘cyst’ could therefore not proceed.
Suze told her husband at an LA Dodgers baseball game by giving him a onesie and a note. “She looked like she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time,” says Andrew.
Shortly after that match, Suze started feeling worse and went to the hospital. There she was examined and after an MRI scan and an ultrasound it became clear that her uterus was empty.
Extremely small chance
In such pregnancies there is a greater than 90 percent chance that the baby will ultimately not survive. And the chance is about 1 in 5 that a child who is born will have abnormalities. But for Suze and Ryu, against all expectations, things went well.
He was born on August 18 this year during a risky operation in which Suze lost liters of blood. She herself was completely anesthetized. Eventually the doctors got the bleeding under control. “I really believe in miracles,” Suze looks back on her remarkable pregnancy. “God has given us the best gift I could ask for.”