Mothers have incredible strength and resilience especially when it is a life-or-death situation for their child. In a similar incident of a mom’s bravery, a child was saved when the woman decided to perform her own C-section with no medical training, and that too, using a kitchen knife!
In a rare incident in Mexico, a woman named Inés Ramírez Pérez came across a deadly situation for herself and her child. When medical help did not arrive even after her 12-hour long and grueling labor, Pérez went through some intensely challenging times when she was left with no choice but to let herself and her baby die. She then decided to take the matter into her own hands, quite literally, and using a kitchen knife, she cut through her skin and flesh to bring her baby into the world on her own. She performed this C-section on herself in such a critical situation as she was determined to save her 9th child while also surviving herself for her 7 other children.
Pérez lives in a one-room cabin in an underdeveloped rural village in Southern Mexico. The village lacks not just water, electricity, and sanitation but healthcare access too. In such a situation, the woman has experienced both the joys and pains of motherhood because of the tragic loss of one of her 8 children. But this time when Pérez went into labor with her 9th child, she knew that she was in a critical situation. She did not have any adults around her to assist but she was dead set on taking the drastic measure to save her life and her baby’s. Despite not being medically trained, the extraordinary woman managed to carefully cut through her uterus without damaging her organs to bring out her baby. Both the mother and her baby miraculously survived the ordeal.
Luckily, Pérez had a substantial experience in animal slaughtering and this skill came to her rescue when no medical help did. In the desperate moment, the woman used this knowledge to perform her own cesarean section at home. After subsiding her pain, Pérez finally developed the courage to arm herself with a knife from her kitchen to begin the unimaginable. Soon, she started slicing through her abdomen going from skin to fat and from muscle to finally reach the uterus. After performing the agonizing procedure for over an hour to finally deliver her baby boy, Pérez instructed one of her older children to go get a nurse. The latter stitched her up before they could move her to the ‘nearest’ hospital at about an 8-hour distance. While Pérez suffered no infections, the baby was also breathing and crying healthily.
While the incident reflects on a mother’s bravery and has our eyebrows raised at her presence of mind, it also sheds light on the urgent need for improved healthcare access in such regions. We need to make sure that no more mothers and babies go through what Pérez had to.
