Baby taken from mom’s stomach

A relieved Yolanda Phillip, 21, of St Margaret’s Village was yesterday thanking her lucky stars that her son, who weighed a mere 1.1 kilos (just over two pounds) at birth, survived the delicate two-hour surgical procedure called a Laparotomy.

Doctors told Newsday the baby boy was delivered from his mother’s abdomen at 34 weeks after the placenta started to degenerate which posed a threat to the baby’s life.

Phillip who has been warded for the past two months, said when the doctors discovered the foetus was developing in the stomach rather than in the womb, they advised her to terminate the pregnancy since the chances of a foetus surviving such a development were slim. However, she refused to do this.

A team of doctors led by gynaecologist Dr Krishna Rampersadsingh delivered the baby in a two-hour surgical operation —the first such procedure done at the SFGH. A similar procedure was done three months ago at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) in Mt Hope.

Rampersadsingh said: “it was a very risky situation.Yolanda was advised of the risk of her pregnancy, but she made a decision to keep her baby and we monitored her continuously. We monitored the foetus and when the placenta began to degenerate, we removed the baby at 34 weeks because the baby was struggling to survive. It is truly a miracle.”

Speaking to Newsday, Phillip said she was extremely happy that the whole episode was over. Her relieved husband Andy Thomas said he was naming his son ‘Asa’, which he said, means healing. “This experience is one we would never forget,” he added.

In a press release issued yesterday, South-West Regional Health Authority communications manager Nalini Parasram, said the hospital’s management applauded the medical team for a job well done.

Dr Rampersadsingh said a pregnancy in which the baby is lodged in the abdomen and not the womb always carries a high motality rate in which the mother could bleed to death by the impact of the foetus on her internal organs.