Chinese Newborn Survives Being Flushed Down Toilet By Mom [Photos]

A Chinese newborn miraculously survived being flushed down the toilet by his mother in northwest China. The mother flushed the newborn boy down the toilet soon after she gave birth to him.

A passerby reportedly heard the newborn’s anguished screams from inside the sewer and called the local emergency services in Suide County, in the Shaanxi Province of China.

When the fire department workers arrived they worked as fast as they could to remove the cover of the sewer. They found the newborn lying on his back in a pool of filth. He was taken to the hospital where medical staff took care of him. Miraculously, he survived the ordeal with only a few minor scratches.

The newborn, nicknamed Xiaoxiao, meaning “exceedingly small” or “tiny,” is now recovering at the hospital while local police search for his mother.

Members of the local fire department decided to take responsibility for Xiaoxiao until the mother is found and the case investigated to determine what happened.

According to the Daily Mail, Li Zhi, the Suide County fire department officer who led the team of rescue workers, said they took great care to avoid hurting the newborn while cutting through the cover to open the sewer. He said they also took care to avoid dislodging the newborn from the position in which they found him because he could drown if, for instance, he turned and lay on his face instead of on his back.

Li also said that the newborn was able to survive being flushed down the toilet because no one else flushed before he was rescued.

“It was really a race against time because somebody could have flushed something down the sewer again at any stage, or the baby might have turned over and ended up face first in the filthy water and drowned. But we didn’t want to smash the pipe because we thought that might also hurt or even kill the baby. So we had to use a mixture of tools in order to ease him towards the opening and then pull him out. He still had the umbilical cord attached and it had obviously been clumsily cut.”

According to Doctor Li Zhiping, in charge of the baby’s care at the hospital, he was born in good health and suffered no injuries despite the shocking physical abuse of being flushed down a narrow pipe coursing with filth. He also said he did not expect him to suffer any complications.

“The child survived the ordeal surprisingly unscathed. I can’t think of any similar case where a child survived being effectively flushed down the toilet.”

Police have appealed to the public for information that could help them find Xiaoxiao’s mother. Although there are concerns that she would avoid seeking the medical care she likely needs after giving birth, police said she could face criminal charges.

This is not the first time that an incident involving someone flushing a newborn down the toilet has been reported in China in recent times. The Inquistr reported in September the case of a newborn whose mother, a university student at China’s Linyi University in Shandong Province, flushed the baby down the toilet.

The young student gave birth to the baby while standing over the toilet in the school dormitory and immediately tried to get rid of the baby by flushing it down.

Investigators said the young woman flushed the newborn down the toilet to hide evidence of her pregnancy, but the child became stuck in the narrow sewage pipe.

Other students were alerted by the screams of the baby and called the emergency services, who worked feverishly against time to save the child before it drowned or suffocated in the pipe.

The Inquisitr also reported recently the case of a newborn girl who survived being buried alive by her parents, who thought she had died after being born premature.

[Images via the Daily Mail]