• Posted December 17, 2025

Doctors Deliver 'Miracle' Baby While Removing 22-Pound Ovarian Cyst

Ryu Lopez is quite literally a miracle baby.

Ryu developed completely outside his mother’s uterus, resting on his mother’s vital organs in what doctors called a very rare abdominal ectopic pregnancy.

Doctors discovered Ryu as they prepared to remove a 22-pound ovarian cyst from his mother, Suze Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse from Bakersfield, California.

“Suze was pregnant, but her uterus was empty, and a giant benign ovarian cyst weighing over 20 pounds was taking up so much space,” Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said in a news release.

“We then discovered a nearly full-term baby boy in a small space in the abdomen, near the liver, with his butt resting on the uterus,” Ozimek added. “A pregnancy this far outside the uterus that continues to develop is almost unheard of.”  

Abdominal ectopic pregnancies pose an exceptionally high risk of catastrophic maternal bleeding and fetal death, doctors said. The placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the fetus, cannot grow safely in the abdomen.

It’s extraordinarily rare to have an infant survive such a pregnancy, and those who do often face severe health problems following delivery, doctors said.

“It was profound to see this full-term baby sitting behind a very large ovarian tumor, not in the uterus. In my entire career, I’ve never even heard of one making it this far into the pregnancy,” gynecological oncologist Dr. Michael Manuel of Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center said in a news release.

Lopez discovered she was pregnant during preparations for surgery to remove the 22-pound cyst, which had been growing for years.

Those preparations involve a routine pregnancy test. The results came as a welcome, but jarring, surprise to Lopez.

“I could not believe that after 17 years of praying, and trying, for a second child, that I was actually pregnant,” she said in a news release.

Lopez waited three days before sharing the news with her husband during a date night at a Dodgers baseball game in Los Angeles.

But during the trip Lopez started having pain, and her husband took her to Cedars-Sinai for evaluation.

That’s when MRI and ultrasound scans revealed the position of her baby.

It turned out that as the baby grew inside Lopez’s abdomen, its body pushed her very large cyst forward, making the mass look like it was getting even bigger, doctors said.

“It makes sense that she just thought the tumor was getting bigger again, not that she could be pregnant,” Ozimek said.

Cedars-Sinai quickly pulled together a team of 30 experts to both deliver the baby safely and remove Lopez’ cyst, during an Aug. 18 procedure.

“We had to figure out how to deliver the baby with a placenta and its blood vessels attached in the abdomen, remove the very large ovarian mass and do everything we could to save mom and this child,” Manuel said.

Manuel lifted the massive cyst out of the way so Ozimek could quickly deliver the baby.

Ryu came into the world weighing 8 pounds with a full head of hair and few health problems, doctors said.

One serious concern was whether Ryu’s lungs had developed properly, and whether he’d be able to breathe.

“We were very prepared to handle any lung problems the baby might have. But he came out of anesthesia pretty quickly and he was feisty,” Dr. Sara Dayanim, a neonatologist with Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s, said in a news release.

Once the newborn had been sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, doctors turned their attention back to Lopez.

“As soon as the baby was delivered, Lopez started hemorrhaging badly. We were a specially trained team of obstetric anesthesiologists and well prepared, but it was still intense,” Cedars-Sinai anesthesiologist Dr. Michael Sanchez said in a news release.

“I had already powered up a special machine that delivers blood products fast because every second matters," Sanchez said. "We used 11 units of blood.”

Both mother and child have recovered and are healthy and thriving, doctors said.

The baby’s full name is Ryu Jesse Lopez. His father, Andrew Lopez, said they chose “Jesse” for his middle name because it means “gift from God.”

“He is our gift. And Ryu and Suze are my miracles,” Andrew Lopez said. “They let me in the operating room, and it was tough to watch what she was going through, and amazing to see Ryu delivered. So yes, many prayers have been answered.”

Suze Lopez is thankful.

“I appreciate every little thing. Everything. Every day is a gift and I’m never going to waste it,” she said. “God gave me this baby so that he could be an example to the world that God exists — that miracles, modern-day miracles, do happen.”

More information

The International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology has more on abdominal ectopic pregnancy.

SOURCE: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, news release, Dec. 10, 2025