This is actually why it’s called a wake.
Before modern medicine and embalming, humankind feared being buried alive. Tales abound of mechanisms like a bell on a string to alert passersby of an accidentally buried live person. And it wasn’t completely unheard of for a dead person to be actually alive, just with barely detectable vitals.
Nowadays it doesn’t happen that much. But baby Angel Salvador (I’m almost skeptical of that) was born last week in Paraguay, weighing just 1.1 lbs. He was declared dead and his father Jose took him home for a funeral and wake.
The somber occasion was interrupted, however, when baby Angel began crying from his coffin. In a case officials are calling “very unusual,” the child’s vitals were so faint that he was declared dead mistakenly. From the BBC :
A doctor who works at the hospital’s maternity unit said staff had tried to revive the baby for an hour before declaring him dead.
“His pulse was so low that it was undetectable,” Aida Notario said.
According to medical records, the baby weighed only 500g (17.6oz).
While the hospital’s head of pediatric care admits the child’s vital signs were not properly checked, the child’s organs were not developed enough for him to survive outside the womb. His death was confirmed Monday .
