Brazilian Woman Undergoes Cesarean Section, Doctors Say She Was Never Pregnant
There are few things that rival the excitement of a baby. Who will he or she look like? How much will the baby weigh? What day will the baby be born? While expectant mothers wait out what can be an uncomfortable last few weeks of pregnancy, these are the hopeful things they think about and daydream about their little one.
Such was the case for Claudia Aparecida Lopes, 30 years old, and her husband, Alexandro Donizete Alves, 23 years old, of Brazil, as they eagerly awaited the birth of their child. They already knew the answers to some of the questions: local obstetricians in Brazil had told them that their baby was a boy and that he could not be delivered vaginally, because he was “sitting down” according to the baby’s father. This likely meant he was in a frank breech position, and while the possibility of vaginal birth exists, the odds of complications for both mother and child increase dramatically. When the baby failed to turn into a head-down position, as was shown to the couple by ultrasound, doctors decided to proceed with a Cesarean birth when the baby boy was due. After months of anticipation, that day came. Blood work and previous ultrasounds had revealed the baby boy was perfectly healthy and they would be experiencing the joy of a healthy son soon.
The morning of the Cesarean section, however, was the last time that anything was joyful or normal for the couple. Instead of receiving a healthy baby boy into her arms, Claudia Lopes received devastating, unbelievable news from her physician — they had surgically opened her womb for the C-Section birth, only to find no baby at all. They told Lopes and Alves that there had never been a baby, that Claudia had never been pregnant. The couple claims that they were told by doctors that the pregnancy was “psychological,” or was a psychiatric condition that can occur when a woman wants to badly be pregnant. In these instances, her menstrual cycle may even cease, and her abdomen may grow as a normally gravid uterus would cause it to. But none of this made sense for the couple, who said that a chemist had confirmed the pregnancy through blood tests and urine tests early in the pregnancy, a doctor had put the expectant mother on prenatal vitamins, and that they had seen their unborn child several times on ultrasound.
Alves says there’s nothing “imaginary” about his wife’s horizontal C-section scar down her abdomen, which is only made when doctors are prepared to deliver a baby surgically. He says if the condition was psychological, there are many people involved in the psychological problem — himself and the doctors included, who saw the baby moving on ultrasound screens.
“My wife had a huge cut across her belly and they simply told us that there wasn’t a baby after all, it was all psychological. That’s when I called the police and registered the occurrence. If the pregnancy was psychological, how come he accompanied the whole pregnancy. If it’s true, then I must have psychological problems too, because I saw the child on the ultrasound and so did he.”
In fact, the police are being involved because of the fact that the woman did receive prenatal care from early in the pregnancy, and many indicators show that there indeed was a baby. The scenario begs the question — where is the baby boy now and why is he gone? Brazilian civil police chief Claudia Coelho Franchi said both parties will be heard and evidence examined, according to Opposing Views.
“At the moment I don’t know who falsified what. We don’t yet know why a cesarian was carried out and everything has to be investigated. We could we dealing with a psychiatrically-disturbed patient. The investigation is to find out exactly where and in what moment the error occurred. We will examine the two ultrasound scans presented by the patient and find out if the doctor carried out the cesarian just on the basis of seeing the scans. We have the testimonies of both parties and they will be investigated.”
[Image: Ian Waldie/Getty]
