Stories of Unusual Pregnancies
Despite getting pregnant and giving birth for thousands of years, all women more or less give birth the same way, and unusual pregnancies don’t often end in happy stories. Here, however, are three true stories of unusual pregnancies that do end happily.
Phoenix, Arizona
Nicollette Soto, 27, gave birth to a healthy son despite being warned that carrying the child to term endangered not only her life, but also that of her unborn child. Doctor’s suspected that Nicollette’s son was being carried in her abdomen, totally outside of her uterus. They feared that the placenta may have attached to a vital organ, or that removing the baby could be very tricky.
It turns out, however, that the embryo attached to the area where the uterus meets the fallopian tube, a condition known as a cornual pregnancy. According to doctors, that part of the uterus is incapable of stretching enough to accommodate a growing fetus. Pregnancies of this type tend to end with the fallopian tube rupturing around the 12 or 14 week of pregnancy. For Nicollette, however, her uterus did continue to stretch, and the baby was born at 32 weeks, healthy and doing just fine.
Had the unusual condition been spotted early enough, doctors would have advised terminating the pregnancy. Carrying the baby could result in death for both mother and child. Despite these grave warnings, Nicollette continued with the pregnancy, and she had a happy ending.
Didsbury, England
Having multiple babies is something that happens rarely unless there have been IVF treatments involved. Twins are more common than triplets, but there is only a 1 in 25,000 chance of having non-identical triplets without any medical intervention.
For Cathering Cunningham, this is exactly what happened. She gave birth to Max, Sam and Jamie, non-identical triplets. For the last four months of her pregnancy she was on bed-rest and under special care, but the triplets were born healthy and happy.
Huntington, New York
Suzanne Francis, 46, and her husband Robert, 50, went through the scariest five weeks of their lives when they were told that the baby they tried so hard to conceive was in trouble. There was fluid building around his heart, which could result in the baby’s lungs not developing properly or that the baby could have congestive heart failure. In either case, the baby was not expected to live long after being born.
At 13 weeks into her pregnancy, Suzanne and her husband, were shocked, upset and very concerned. According to doctors, however, there was hope. They could try to drain the fluid by inserting a needle into the baby’s heart; a procedure that had been done only 10 times before.