Until Lia Tharby finally gave birth, doctors did not know what was going on inside her body. If they had, they would have advised terminating her pregnancy.
But test after test failed to show that the fetus was growing outside her uterus, a condition so rare only four similar births have been documented worldwide. The situation is extremely risky, endangering the lives of both mother and baby because of the great potential for complications.
On April 30, Ms. Tharby gave birth to her daughter, Emylea, at 33 weeks. It was only during the vertical caesarean section that doctors discovered the umbilical cord was attached to the outside of the uterus. Emylea had grown in her mother's abdominal cavity, her skull flattened slightly from butting Ms. Tharby's liver.
The baby's survival, while being described as miraculous, also lends credibility to a theory almost universally relegated to the realm of science fiction: that any human, woman or man, can give birth.
Researchers theorize that a fetus can grow in the abdominal cavity if the placenta manages to latch on to an organ capable of sustaining it. The risk of failure is great, but the process is possible.
“This is nature's experimentation,” said Victor Han, chair of the division of neonatal-perinatal medicine at St. Joseph's Health Care in London, Ont., where Ms. Tharby, 28, gave birth.
If the appropriate conditions are created and the right hormones produced, any person can conceive, he said. But, he added, if the placenta latched on to an organ such as the liver, the organ could malfunction or a major hemorrhage could occur. The uterus is a far better candidate because its purpose is reproduction, he said.
Emylea has a dislocated hip and two club feet, but bears no other signs of her unconventional route from conception to birth. The outcome has stunned and delighted not just her parents, Ms. Tharby and Todd Miller, but also doctors at St. Joseph's.
“You can say that Emylea eluded physicians from being diagnosed properly as being outside the uterus,” Dr. Han said. “If the diagnosis had happened early on, Emylea would not have made it through,” he added, noting the pregnancy likely would have been terminated because of the risk to the mother.
He hailed the event as important for researchers because of the light it could shed on this rare type of pregnancy, known as extrauterine.
It was not a physically pleasant experience for Ms. Tharby, who had been warned her first pregnancy could be uncomfortable but had no idea what was in store.
“It felt like razors cutting me up from inside every time she moved,” she said of the severe abdominal pain she suffered. The pain got worse as Emylea grew. It was only after Ms. Tharby gave birth that doctors realized the baby had been slowly putting more pressure on her mother's liver.
Three ultrasounds had shown no sign of the extrauterine pregnancy.
Unlike most ectopic, or “out of place,” pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg becomes implanted outside the uterus in a Fallopian tube, an extrauterine pregnancy can develop without the fetus bursting the organ that contains it. However, the condition is so rare that doctors did not consider the possibility Ms. Tharby had it.
In hindsight, she is thrilled the problem was not discovered, which likely would have meant ending the pregnancy.
“I felt extremely lucky that they didn't know what was wrong.”
Emylea, who arrived weighing four pounds, 13 ounces, dislocated both hips at birth. One hip popped back into place, but she will need surgery to repair the other. Her parents are also massaging her feet daily to try to align her heels. Ms. Tharby said Emylea does not appear to feel pain from her physical problems, and she is confident the baby will be completely normal.
Ms. Tharby, however, can no longer bear children because doctors had to remove some of her reproductive organs.
The story of Emylea, she said, has overwhelmed her at times.
“I find that I believe in miracles a lot more now than I did before. I remember I was praying to God every night, because I was scared I was going to lose her. But he answered my prayers, because she's here with me today.”
With reports from Elizabeth St. Philip and Avis Favaro of CTV News
