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Miracle baby may be a world first

By Rebekah Cavanagh

May 30, 2008 06:00am

Article from: Northern Territory News

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A TERRITORY baby has been dubbed a miracle after she survived – in what is believed to be a world first – a full-term ovarian pregnancy.

Durga Thangarajah defied the odds and was born at Darwin Private Hospital at 8.47am yesterday after a two-hour delicate operation saw doctors carefully cut her from her mother Meera's right ovary, the Northern Territory News reports.

Doctors are baffled at the medical phenomenon, saying an ovarian pregnancy is one of the rarest variations of ectopic pregnancies and generally have life threatening complications.

Because of the high risk, expecting mothers who present to hospital in the early stages with an ectopic pregnancy are made to abort.

Recovering in her hospital bed last night, Mrs Thangarajah, 34, from Nakara in Darwin's northern suburbs, fought to hold back tears as she told how she had no idea her pregnancy was abnormal.
"I didn't know anything until I woke up after the caesarean and the doctors told me,'' she said.

"I'm feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.''

Mrs Thangarajah and her husband Ravi arrived at the hospital at 6.30am yesterday to have a planned caesarean for their second child.

They thought everything was fine and had no idea what the doctor was going to find.

Obstetrician Andrew Miller told the Northern Territory News he was stunned when he went to perform a caesarean section on Mrs Thangarajah and found the baby squeezed into the right ovary.

He said she was lucky the ovary had not ruptured as the baby grew and stretched the skin, adding that the skin was so thin he could see the baby's hair and facial features through it.

"It could have ruptured at any moment, leaving both mother and baby's lives at risk,'' he said.

Dr Miller said it was a medical phenomenon.

"This form of pregnancy is rare enough, but to have it go full term is unheard of,'' he said. "I have never come across it in any hospital.

"It truly is a miracle she got a living baby out of it -- she's extraordinarily lucky.''

Dr Miller said Mrs Thangarajah's egg didn't travel down the fallopian tube and into the uterus, instead staying in the ovary for the full term.

He said most women whose egg begins to fertilise outside of the womb present themselves to hospital with severe pain and bleeding in the early weeks of their pregnancy and they have no choice but to abort the baby or risk their own life.

But Mrs Thangarajah had no symptoms apart from the usual morning sickness, discomfort and nausea.

And her ultrasounds at regular check-ups have never showed anything unusual.

Dr Miller said had the ectopic pregnancy been detected in the early stages Mrs Thangarajah would have been advised to abort.

Baby Durga - which means "Goddess'' in Hindi - is a little sister for six-year-old Gayatri.

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Miracle baby / Brad Fleet
Meet Durga ... Ravi Thangarajah with his newborn baby girl who survived a full ectopic pregnancy. Picture: Brad Fleet

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