Woman Performs Self-Cesarean Section

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:47 pm

Alone in her one-room cabin high in the mountains of southern Mexico, Ines Ramirez Perez felt the pounding pains of a child insistent on entering the world.

The sun had set hours ago. The nearest clinic was 80km away over rough roads, and her husband, her only assistant during a half-dozen previous births, was drinking at a cantina. She had no phone and neither did the cantina.

So at midnight, after 12 hours of constant pain, the petite, 40-year-old mother of six sat down on a low wooden bench. She took several gulps from a bottle of rubbing alcohol, grabbed a 15-cm knife and began to cut.

By the light of a single dim bulb, Ramirez sawed through skin, fat and muscle before reaching inside her uterus and pulling out her baby boy. She says she cut his umbilical cord with a pair of scissors, then passed out.

Ramirez said she thinks she operated on herself for about an hour before extricating her child and then fainting. When she regained consciousness, she wrapped a sweater around her bleeding abdomen and asked her 6-year-old son, Benito, to run for help. Several hours later, Cruz and a second healthworker found Ramirez alert and lying beside her live baby.

Cruz sewed her 17-cm incision up with a regular needle and thread. The two men lifted mother and child onto a thin straw mat, lugged them up horse paths to the town's only road, then drove them to the clinic over two hours away.

Ines Ramirez is recognised internationally as a modern miracle: She is believed to be the only woman known to have performed a successful Caesarean-section on herself.

AussiePam · Post by **AussiePam** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:52 pm

All I can say is WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:59 pm

Isn't that crazy? I know you have to do what you have to do but like you said, Pam, WOW!! I can't believe she didn't bleed to death!!

AussiePam · Post by **AussiePam** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:51 pm

I suppose it would have been more normal if she had bled to death and much less newsworthy. Just one more woman in a remote area dying in childbirth.

drumbunny1 · Post by **drumbunny1** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:23 am

Ouch...all I can say....ouch.

AussiePam · Post by **AussiePam** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:14 am

Why did this somehow remind me of some nasty way of dealing with enemies by nailing them by their testicles to a wooden floor, giving them a knife, then setting a fire around them...

Grin.

It's been that kind of day.

Cheers !!!

And let's not campaign for a constitoootional right to bare bollocks

lemon_and_mint · Post by **lemon_and_mint** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:44 am

maybe i don't understand the story.

Why would she do that?

lemon_and_mint · Post by **lemon_and_mint** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 5:13 am

jimbo;756187 wrote: i'm a der brain so dont take this as gospel but i think the baby would not come out and she was afraid it would die so she cut it out

either that or that purple belly button fluff proved harder to get out than she had at first thought

:D

right, just that labours of longer than 12 hours are not unusual - see other thread about 48 hour labour, so i wondered why she didnt just wait a bit.

lemon_and_mint · Post by **lemon_and_mint** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 6:07 am

i do wonder though she had 6 kids so where were they, and she was in labour for 12 hours while her husband was up the pub - thats rather a long drinking session, so presumably he knew she was in labour, or did he not come back for days on end?

lemon_and_mint · Post by **lemon_and_mint** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 6:57 am

jimbo;756217 wrote: boy are you by any chance related to spock

ok i give up

note to self never ever try and make lemon laugh :wah::wah:

oh sorry, you're very funny yes :wah:

i was just turning the story over in my ind..........

lemon_and_mint · Post by **lemon_and_mint** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 7:14 am

jimbo;756224 wrote: how very logical

:wah::wah:

raises one eyebrow in jimbos direction.:wah:(do my ears look big in this hat?)

lemon_and_mint · Post by **lemon_and_mint** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 7:40 am

[QUOTE=jimbo;756234]which vulcan is most like you

cross bewteen both of them!

sunny104 · Post by **sunny104** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 8:04 am

wow!

but um....having given birth twice I can definitely understand that you would do anything to ensure your baby was ok.....wow.....:-6

AussiePam · Post by **AussiePam** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:26 pm

She's already had six, so probably had a good idea that thing's weren't going well with number seven. First labour is usually slow. By number seven, you'd expect things to go a lot quicker, probably. All the stretching bits having already had lots of practice and probably just given up bouncing back and stayed stretched. Baby in breech position possibly or placenta in wrong place???? Too much info?????

I don't believe I'm actually discussing this, seriously... guffaw. Obviously I need the first coffee of the day. Badly. Bye, all !!!

911 · Post by **911** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:55 pm

Let's see. . . .twelve hours of constant pain, she does self surgery and THEN she sends the son for help.

Why didn't she send the son to get his good fer nuttin papa or the neighbor sooner?:-5