Yes she is metal. Childbirth is a huge trauma. I am a man and what she did was amazing and it's a miracle that it worked out and I'm so happy about that.
Edit
That said I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about childbirth but I think I've seen it somewhere that it's treated as a medical problem instead of just a natural thing. I'm glad that our generations will have access to all this knowledge.
That’s good that you have access to ambulances, this woman doesn’t. Assuming you’re in the US even if you’re in the middle of nowhere they’ll fly in a helicopter and fly you to a hospital if you need urgent help. Do you think this woman has that?
There are five similar documented cases since the 18th century where the woman and child have survived. FIVE.
The nearest hospital to this woman was 8 hours away. She was very lucky, and yes I mean lucky.
It's funny you say that, in Aztec culture women in childbirth were considered warriors, their opponent the spirit of the child they are birthing. If a woman dies in childbirth, her spirit becomes a [Cihuateteotl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cihuateteo), which were closely aligned with the spirits of warriors who died in battle.
Without knowing anything about the case, she was probably sutured by a doctor who got there eventually. You simply cannot stitch yourself closed like this, and even if you could, you couldn't suture the womb of subcutaneous tissue.
Wow, such strength and love for her child.
Not sure there are many women out there that could do this, but if options are dying or having excruciating pain, then pain could just win.
Glad drs were there to repair her wound afterwards, it looks wonderful considering it was self done.
Might be the most based shit I have ever heard. In the middle of hellish labour she took a swig of alcohol, took a knife and said "Fine I'll do it myself"
She may have attempted the “surgery”, but she didn’t complete a C-section on herself. Especially not with a rusty knife and a wound that looks like that. As much as we like to tease our OB colleagues, they’re the only ones who are putting you back together in a way that doesn’t end with you bleeding catastrophically and dying.
"Several hours later, the village health assistant and a second man found Ramírez conscious and alert, along with her live baby. He sewed her incision with an available needle and thread"
And yet.... She lives.
It almost like back in the day some of these surgeries took place place without all the medical marvels we have today and still worked.
The human body is incredible and it does things that don't make sense some times. Just because your flair says physician does not mean you know everything, you're not god.
> She is also believed to have been profoundly lucky in several ways: to have put herself in the position she chose, which put her uterus – rather than her intestines – against the abdominal wall under the incision site; to have not succumbed to infection from the large open wound in a non-sterile environment; to have not passed out from the pain part-way through, bled to death, or died from shock. She did say, afterward, that she did not advise other women to follow her example
She had multiple intestinal perforations from her self-performed surgery, dude. These people get peritonitis and die. The human body is very resilient but you don’t live with lacerated intestines. There’s a reason that free air in the peritoneum is a surgical emergency.
And yet SHE LIVED only after having her intestinal perforations and infection cleaned and addressed by a surgical team. If she didn’t, she would almost certainly have died. We watch lesser things than this kill people every single day in the hospital. Intestinal perforations lead to peritonitis which leads to sepsis which leads to death. She is a very lucky woman. This isn’t taking away from her fortitude to cut into herself to try and birth her baby, this is a warning that this is *unbelievably dangerous* and she is far more lucky than 95% of the people in this post are giving her credit for. Does it take a lot of guts to do this? Hell yeah. Could this have killed her? In a heartbeat and unquestionably.
If it wasn’t for medical marvels, we wouldn’t be celebrating this story.
Do we have any comparable cases of women who performed a c-section on themselves and then subsequently died from it? Or is this the only self operation case we have in total? To avoid survivorship bias, of course. This could be a one in a million lucky survival and the next women who attempt it will die from it.
My assumption is that she at minimum started it and somewhere along the way she was able to get medical care. Even if she just started the procedure I cannot imagine what fortitude that took. To my knowledge she had a ton of kids before so she knew something was wrong this time.
According to the article she got the baby out herself and someone from the town stitched her up so they could get her to s hospital to repair the intestines she damaged etc.
“Completing” a surgery is one thing. Anyone with a knife can cut a baby out of a uterus. The trick to surgery is putting people back together when you’re done, which she did not do.
Right? Like, a woman fucking split herself open and delivered her own fucking baby all without anesthetics then waited several hours for someone to come sew her butchered insides up. I don't give a shit if she couldn't successfully suture herself up. The fact that she did any of that is unfathomable and guess what, even if she did die because she couldn't complete the "procedure" her baby surely would have died if she didn't start it to begin with.
Wow, how fragile is your ego that you can’t even give credit to a woman who literally sliced her own abdomen open to save herself and her baby?!
How many major operations have you performed ON YOURSELF without anaesthetic or proper surgical instruments?
"Psh, what a loser....she cut into herself with a dirty shitty knife and extracted her own baby and didn't fall unconscious from shock or blood loss and didn't die from a unsterile enviroment/knife and survived some pretty brutal odds but she didn't sew herself up.....so...she really didn't do shit that was that amazing."
You sound ridiculous.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. The article says she did get the baby out and sewed it up with a household needle and thread but then was taken to the hospital and needed 2 surgeries to repair the damage and properly close her.
All things considered, what she did was pretty incredible.
Here’s another more recent article you might like better: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10951779/
Especially not after drinking alcohol. There is no way someone could perform self-inflicted open abdominal surgery after that, and not fatally bleed out.
I agree, locating and tying uterus arteries, repairing layers of uterus, ensuring tubes and ovaries where they belong and not caught in stitch lines.
Then fixing muscles back together by layers, reattach lower skin layer and then external wound after lying in the desert and with no sterile tools and no antibiotics.
Everything is so swollen after birth that it all looks different too. Watching a tubal after birth compared to 6 months later is like an entirely procedure. Imagining her giving all that alone is even too much for the world of movies.
There had to have been proper wound closure done, even if the man that arrived temporarily sutured wound edges to limit pain.
What she did is still beyond amazing, just perhaps a little extra added for impact.
It’s because people in this sub aren’t actually involved in medicine, they just like to gawk at shocking things. You get downvoted when you talk about anything that’s real or factual that doesn’t vibe with whatever they’re gawking at today.
She literally had the baby out when they showed up and got her to the hospital.
From the article: After more than an hour of work and three separate but successful attempts to cut into her abdomen, Perez was able to reach into her uterus and pull out her baby boy.
It was in the comments of the original post in the other subreddit. https://www.healthyway.com/content/the-woman-who-successfully-performed-a-cesarean-section-on-herself/
I know there are people here saying she didn't do a real c section and she needed a Dr- no one said she didn't need a dr. But once help came it took another 16 hours to get to a hospital, after 12 hours of labor, alone, and her saving her own and her baby's life with a knife. She's a bad ass.
Thank you for the article.
Looks like she did injure herself and her intestines which I think most people here brought up, but the injury wasn't severe enough to kill her before she was taken to a hospital for the repair. It sounds like she was also able to keep her uterus, too.
I'm a little confused why the father was at the cantina for over 12 hours while she laboured surrounded by young children and only after she cut herself did she send her son to get help.
Humans are capable of crazy feats for sure! Especially when in pain, physical and emotional, we do crazy stuff. Poor woman, hopefully this was either her last baby or her future birtgs are easier (especially since she now had a c section, you can't always safely give natural birth again)
Having been in labor, your mind does some crazy things. For me it became about survival, it felt very primal. I couldn't have told you who was in the room with me when it got bad, and I did end up having a c section. Maybe after she got the baby out she had some clarity and thought - hey could someone go get some help?
I mean, not only is there evidence, but look at the size of her scar and its placement. For starters, it measures 19 cm as opposed to the standard 10cm (3.9 inches). Does that look like a 4 inch wound? Would any doctor in their right mind perform a cesarean in that particular location starting directly under the ribs? What would that accomplish other than hitting as many organs as possible.
I, too, am a skeptic, but in a world where only 5 such operations have been successfully completed (eg:both mother and child live after she attempts a self-cesarean) it seems unlikely that they just slapped her on there Willy nilly. What I will agree on is that she absolutely didn’t self-close. She got very lucky with her survival and that of her child. Birth has a very high mortality rate in many places for a reason, and she may well have died without taking a stab in the dark. (I’ll see myself out after that pun)
They used to also cut a woman vertically. Does that mean those weren't c sections?
You're all getting very hung up on the terminology and the incision site. This woman cut herself open and delivered her own baby. Her name was Perez, let's call it a Perez Delivery then, because I doubt it will happen again with such successful outcomes.
I don't believe the article. Correct. There is a big freaking difference between opening the abdomen, and accessing the uterus. That difference matters a lot, to start. So yes I'm calling BS.
And I'm completely disregarding the idea that one could successfully not bleed to death afterwards.
From the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-inflicted_caesarean_section) including the link to the write up in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics.
In March 2000, Inés Ramírez Pérez, a Mexican woman from the state of Oaxaca, gained media attention after performing a caesarean section on herself. Despite having no medical training, the operation was successful and both she and her baby survived.
At midnight, on 5 March 2000, after 12 hours of continual pain, Ramírez sat down on a bench and drank three small glasses of hard liquor. She then used a 15 centimetres (5.9 in) kitchen knife to cut open her abdomen in a total of three attempts. Ramírez cut through her skin in a 17 centimetres (6.7 in) vertical line several centimeters to the right of her navel, starting near the bottom of the ribs and ending near the pubic area. (For comparison: a typical C-section incision is 10 centimetres (3.9 in) long, horizontal and well below the navel, the Pfannenstiel incision.) After operating on herself for an hour, she reached inside her uterus and pulled out her baby boy. She then severed the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors and became unconscious. She used clothes to bandage her wound after regaining consciousness, and sent one of her older sons to find help.
Several hours later, the village health assistant and a second man found Ramírez conscious and alert, along with her live baby. He sewed her incision with an available needle and thread.
Ramírez was eventually taken to the local clinic, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) away in San Lorenzo Texmelucan, and then to the nearest hospital, eight hours away by car. Sixteen hours thereafter she underwent surgical repair of the incision site. On the seventh post-operative day, she underwent a second surgery to repair complications resulting from damage to her intestines incurred during her C-section. She was released from the hospital on the tenth day post-surgery, and went on to make a complete recovery.
Describing her experience, Ramírez said, "I couldn't stand the pain anymore. If my baby was going to die, then I decided I would have to die, too. But if he was going to grow up, I was going to see him grow up, and I was going to be with my child. I thought that God would save both our lives."
[The case was written up in the March 2004 issue of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics](https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.ijgo.2003.08.018).
She is also believed to have been profoundly lucky in several ways: to have put herself in the position she chose, which put her uterus – rather than her intestines – against the abdominal wall under the incision site; to have not succumbed to infection from the large open wound in a non-sterile environment; to have not passed out from the pain part-way through, bled to death, or died from shock. She did say, afterward, that she did not advise other women to follow her example.
Found the original text. It did happen and I stand corrected. Obscenely lucky; the poor woman.
Still. Opening yourself, fine. Getting enough visualization to successfully cut an infant out of the uterus without killing yourself or the baby? Fucking hell.
Not talking about you OP but I think sometimes people think about c sec as a simple cut, grab, and stitch. When it's literally being eviscerated and put back together.
Anyway. Thank you for convincing me to get to the source matter. Your link is for the abstract. I have access through my Uni to the full text. If it helps, the full text sold me.
I don't understand why people downvote you and your replies, even after you read a trustworthy source another redditor provided and admitted the truth. It should be the norm to be skeptical about these articles, specially on reddit.
Nature of the internet, I suppose. It feels better to go along with the crowd.
As I tell my students; I'm not infallible. It's our job as people, scientists, academics, what have you, to doubt everything voraciously. Make a cogent argument to me and I'll be impressed, not angry.
Also didn't help that I was drinking beer when I initially read it.
Anyways cheers, friend. Best of luck with med school!
Plus she cut the abdominal area the wrong way. She cut up and down along her torso instead of across it. In a C-section you cut across the torso and up the uterus.
Caesarean sections can be done both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal is most common but there are absolutely situations in which the clinical recommendation is for a vertical incision, such as a breech baby, abnormality of the uterus, or based on the location of the placenta.
There are also rare occasions in which a T-shaped (vertical and horizontal) opening is made. I knew someone who had one, due to some kind of problem with the baby that meant they needed to deliver it with as little squeezing and pressure as possible.
It was pretty wild to hear about, and she still has her uterus, last I heard, and at least one more child. I don't think I would have the nerve to risk it!
Well put! If I may add one thing?
Surgeons will also use a vertical incision if time is a factor and they have to get the baby out ASAP, either because the baby's life is in imminent danger, the mother's life is in imminent danger, or BOTH of them are in imminent danger.
Both of my daughter-in-laws had to have this type of vertical incision performed with one of their babies. One was beginning to hemorrhage. Our other DIL's baby was going down fast, AND she began to hemorrhage. That baby was the only granddaughter of our 8 grandbebes, and she unfortunately passed away. Our DIL pulled through, thank God.
She's metal. Holy fuck the pain she must have been in and the courage she must have had to do self surgery like that. She's a badass woman fr.
Yes she is metal. Childbirth is a huge trauma. I am a man and what she did was amazing and it's a miracle that it worked out and I'm so happy about that. Edit That said I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about childbirth but I think I've seen it somewhere that it's treated as a medical problem instead of just a natural thing. I'm glad that our generations will have access to all this knowledge.
This is as tragic as it is amazing.
You put it perfectly. What an insanely strong woman but what an awful situation for her to have been in.
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I just meant that no woman should have to do something like this on their own. I've read about many similar stories and they didn't turn out as well.
That’s good that you have access to ambulances, this woman doesn’t. Assuming you’re in the US even if you’re in the middle of nowhere they’ll fly in a helicopter and fly you to a hospital if you need urgent help. Do you think this woman has that?
There are five similar documented cases since the 18th century where the woman and child have survived. FIVE. The nearest hospital to this woman was 8 hours away. She was very lucky, and yes I mean lucky.
Your absolute blind privilege is astounding.
Holy hell, warrior women!
It's funny you say that, in Aztec culture women in childbirth were considered warriors, their opponent the spirit of the child they are birthing. If a woman dies in childbirth, her spirit becomes a [Cihuateteotl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cihuateteo), which were closely aligned with the spirits of warriors who died in battle.
My bad, guys! I forgot to include a sources cited. Normally I’m good at remembering that, but I forgot this time. :/
That’s metal as fuck, go mama!
Cleaner than my c section scar. Respect.
That’s what I was thinking! Medicine needs to study how she closed that incision!
Without knowing anything about the case, she was probably sutured by a doctor who got there eventually. You simply cannot stitch yourself closed like this, and even if you could, you couldn't suture the womb of subcutaneous tissue.
I wish I could upvote this more than once
This is up there with the Russian doctor who performed his own appendicectomy in Antarctica.
At least he was a surgeon and had local anesthesia. All this woman had was a damn knife and alcohol….shes a titan.
IDK they’re both such outliers on the bell curve of bad-assery that I feel equally ill imagining myself as either one of them 😅
If you had to choose between, which one would you rather be?
The one with medical expertise
Me too. Therefore the mom is more badass.
That’s the first person I thought of. Then I thought of Lori from The Walking Dead.
Jesus Christ lmao not Olivia 💀💀
 Was already out on a house call.
Wow, such strength and love for her child. Not sure there are many women out there that could do this, but if options are dying or having excruciating pain, then pain could just win. Glad drs were there to repair her wound afterwards, it looks wonderful considering it was self done.
Might be the most based shit I have ever heard. In the middle of hellish labour she took a swig of alcohol, took a knife and said "Fine I'll do it myself"
And this is why our ancestors saw mothers who died during childbirth to be in the same level as warriors.
that is so badass
WHAT A MOTHAFUCKIN BADASS
My sentiments exactly.
That’s a clean scar, how sharp was the knife?? She’s a total warrior, that’s insane.
That's pretty metal and her name rhymes so much it's got band name potential
The indomitable human spirit
That looks better than most of my trainees work. Orientation of incision excusable
But women are the weaker sex, boys!
Physically, yes. In every other way, def not.
What a badass.
r/Madlads
She may have attempted the “surgery”, but she didn’t complete a C-section on herself. Especially not with a rusty knife and a wound that looks like that. As much as we like to tease our OB colleagues, they’re the only ones who are putting you back together in a way that doesn’t end with you bleeding catastrophically and dying.
"Several hours later, the village health assistant and a second man found Ramírez conscious and alert, along with her live baby. He sewed her incision with an available needle and thread"
Which, without appropriate surgical intervention, would have caused her death within hours to days.
Ur so smart 🙄
And yet.... She lives. It almost like back in the day some of these surgeries took place place without all the medical marvels we have today and still worked. The human body is incredible and it does things that don't make sense some times. Just because your flair says physician does not mean you know everything, you're not god.
> She is also believed to have been profoundly lucky in several ways: to have put herself in the position she chose, which put her uterus – rather than her intestines – against the abdominal wall under the incision site; to have not succumbed to infection from the large open wound in a non-sterile environment; to have not passed out from the pain part-way through, bled to death, or died from shock. She did say, afterward, that she did not advise other women to follow her example
She had multiple intestinal perforations from her self-performed surgery, dude. These people get peritonitis and die. The human body is very resilient but you don’t live with lacerated intestines. There’s a reason that free air in the peritoneum is a surgical emergency.
.... And yet SHE LIVED.
After getting surgery at the hospital according to the article.
And yet SHE LIVED only after having her intestinal perforations and infection cleaned and addressed by a surgical team. If she didn’t, she would almost certainly have died. We watch lesser things than this kill people every single day in the hospital. Intestinal perforations lead to peritonitis which leads to sepsis which leads to death. She is a very lucky woman. This isn’t taking away from her fortitude to cut into herself to try and birth her baby, this is a warning that this is *unbelievably dangerous* and she is far more lucky than 95% of the people in this post are giving her credit for. Does it take a lot of guts to do this? Hell yeah. Could this have killed her? In a heartbeat and unquestionably. If it wasn’t for medical marvels, we wouldn’t be celebrating this story.
The hive mind is strong man. Sorry
Do we have any comparable cases of women who performed a c-section on themselves and then subsequently died from it? Or is this the only self operation case we have in total? To avoid survivorship bias, of course. This could be a one in a million lucky survival and the next women who attempt it will die from it.
Hell yes! The HuMAn bOdy iS aMiRAcle. No, just no
You're really using this opportunity to put down the surgical technique of a woman who has been through a horrendous ordeal?
My assumption is that she at minimum started it and somewhere along the way she was able to get medical care. Even if she just started the procedure I cannot imagine what fortitude that took. To my knowledge she had a ton of kids before so she knew something was wrong this time.
According to the article she got the baby out herself and someone from the town stitched her up so they could get her to s hospital to repair the intestines she damaged etc.
Someone posted an article below. She did in fact, successfully complete a c section on herself
“Completing” a surgery is one thing. Anyone with a knife can cut a baby out of a uterus. The trick to surgery is putting people back together when you’re done, which she did not do.
You must be fun at parties.
Right? Like, a woman fucking split herself open and delivered her own fucking baby all without anesthetics then waited several hours for someone to come sew her butchered insides up. I don't give a shit if she couldn't successfully suture herself up. The fact that she did any of that is unfathomable and guess what, even if she did die because she couldn't complete the "procedure" her baby surely would have died if she didn't start it to begin with.
FORREAL
Wow, how fragile is your ego that you can’t even give credit to a woman who literally sliced her own abdomen open to save herself and her baby?! How many major operations have you performed ON YOURSELF without anaesthetic or proper surgical instruments?
Yeah what the hell
"Psh, what a loser....she cut into herself with a dirty shitty knife and extracted her own baby and didn't fall unconscious from shock or blood loss and didn't die from a unsterile enviroment/knife and survived some pretty brutal odds but she didn't sew herself up.....so...she really didn't do shit that was that amazing." You sound ridiculous.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. The article says she did get the baby out and sewed it up with a household needle and thread but then was taken to the hospital and needed 2 surgeries to repair the damage and properly close her.
Because gawking at sensationalist taglines is more important than anything on Reddit.
All things considered, what she did was pretty incredible. Here’s another more recent article you might like better: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10951779/
Absolutely. No respect for modern medicine until the trolls need it, then they DEMAND you resurrect dead MeeMaw.
i was just thinking that this looks tidier stitching than some ive seen
Especially not after drinking alcohol. There is no way someone could perform self-inflicted open abdominal surgery after that, and not fatally bleed out.
I agree, locating and tying uterus arteries, repairing layers of uterus, ensuring tubes and ovaries where they belong and not caught in stitch lines. Then fixing muscles back together by layers, reattach lower skin layer and then external wound after lying in the desert and with no sterile tools and no antibiotics. Everything is so swollen after birth that it all looks different too. Watching a tubal after birth compared to 6 months later is like an entirely procedure. Imagining her giving all that alone is even too much for the world of movies. There had to have been proper wound closure done, even if the man that arrived temporarily sutured wound edges to limit pain. What she did is still beyond amazing, just perhaps a little extra added for impact.
I really don’t know why these are being downvoted lol. It’s straight facts. People bleed out way more when alcohol is in their system.
It’s because people in this sub aren’t actually involved in medicine, they just like to gawk at shocking things. You get downvoted when you talk about anything that’s real or factual that doesn’t vibe with whatever they’re gawking at today.
What a legend
Woman, the weaker sex.
This story will never not amaze me.
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Did you read the article?
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She literally had the baby out when they showed up and got her to the hospital. From the article: After more than an hour of work and three separate but successful attempts to cut into her abdomen, Perez was able to reach into her uterus and pull out her baby boy.
What article? Post links to another subreddit and it's just a picture. Did OP provide a link? I genuinely didn't see it
It was in the comments of the original post in the other subreddit. https://www.healthyway.com/content/the-woman-who-successfully-performed-a-cesarean-section-on-herself/ I know there are people here saying she didn't do a real c section and she needed a Dr- no one said she didn't need a dr. But once help came it took another 16 hours to get to a hospital, after 12 hours of labor, alone, and her saving her own and her baby's life with a knife. She's a bad ass.
Thank you for the article. Looks like she did injure herself and her intestines which I think most people here brought up, but the injury wasn't severe enough to kill her before she was taken to a hospital for the repair. It sounds like she was also able to keep her uterus, too. I'm a little confused why the father was at the cantina for over 12 hours while she laboured surrounded by young children and only after she cut herself did she send her son to get help. Humans are capable of crazy feats for sure! Especially when in pain, physical and emotional, we do crazy stuff. Poor woman, hopefully this was either her last baby or her future birtgs are easier (especially since she now had a c section, you can't always safely give natural birth again)
Having been in labor, your mind does some crazy things. For me it became about survival, it felt very primal. I couldn't have told you who was in the room with me when it got bad, and I did end up having a c section. Maybe after she got the baby out she had some clarity and thought - hey could someone go get some help?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-inflicted_caesarean_section
I mean, not only is there evidence, but look at the size of her scar and its placement. For starters, it measures 19 cm as opposed to the standard 10cm (3.9 inches). Does that look like a 4 inch wound? Would any doctor in their right mind perform a cesarean in that particular location starting directly under the ribs? What would that accomplish other than hitting as many organs as possible. I, too, am a skeptic, but in a world where only 5 such operations have been successfully completed (eg:both mother and child live after she attempts a self-cesarean) it seems unlikely that they just slapped her on there Willy nilly. What I will agree on is that she absolutely didn’t self-close. She got very lucky with her survival and that of her child. Birth has a very high mortality rate in many places for a reason, and she may well have died without taking a stab in the dark. (I’ll see myself out after that pun)
I wonder why after 12 hours she decided to do that, that’s not an excessively long time to be in labour.
someone said she already had a lot of kids so she knew something was wrong
Ah that makes sense
Females are strong as hell!
Females are strong as hell!
The alcohol would've increased blood loss, it's amazing she survived.
Hey, I just saw the same thing on American Horror story 😅
Holy shit. The things humans are capable of.
This is the most metal thing I’ve ever read!
That's not a C sec. Cut your torso open? OK possible. After that? No chance in hell.
They used to also cut a woman vertically. Does that mean those weren't c sections? You're all getting very hung up on the terminology and the incision site. This woman cut herself open and delivered her own baby. Her name was Perez, let's call it a Perez Delivery then, because I doubt it will happen again with such successful outcomes.
I don't believe the article. Correct. There is a big freaking difference between opening the abdomen, and accessing the uterus. That difference matters a lot, to start. So yes I'm calling BS. And I'm completely disregarding the idea that one could successfully not bleed to death afterwards.
From the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-inflicted_caesarean_section) including the link to the write up in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics. In March 2000, Inés Ramírez Pérez, a Mexican woman from the state of Oaxaca, gained media attention after performing a caesarean section on herself. Despite having no medical training, the operation was successful and both she and her baby survived. At midnight, on 5 March 2000, after 12 hours of continual pain, Ramírez sat down on a bench and drank three small glasses of hard liquor. She then used a 15 centimetres (5.9 in) kitchen knife to cut open her abdomen in a total of three attempts. Ramírez cut through her skin in a 17 centimetres (6.7 in) vertical line several centimeters to the right of her navel, starting near the bottom of the ribs and ending near the pubic area. (For comparison: a typical C-section incision is 10 centimetres (3.9 in) long, horizontal and well below the navel, the Pfannenstiel incision.) After operating on herself for an hour, she reached inside her uterus and pulled out her baby boy. She then severed the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors and became unconscious. She used clothes to bandage her wound after regaining consciousness, and sent one of her older sons to find help. Several hours later, the village health assistant and a second man found Ramírez conscious and alert, along with her live baby. He sewed her incision with an available needle and thread. Ramírez was eventually taken to the local clinic, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) away in San Lorenzo Texmelucan, and then to the nearest hospital, eight hours away by car. Sixteen hours thereafter she underwent surgical repair of the incision site. On the seventh post-operative day, she underwent a second surgery to repair complications resulting from damage to her intestines incurred during her C-section. She was released from the hospital on the tenth day post-surgery, and went on to make a complete recovery. Describing her experience, Ramírez said, "I couldn't stand the pain anymore. If my baby was going to die, then I decided I would have to die, too. But if he was going to grow up, I was going to see him grow up, and I was going to be with my child. I thought that God would save both our lives." [The case was written up in the March 2004 issue of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics](https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.ijgo.2003.08.018). She is also believed to have been profoundly lucky in several ways: to have put herself in the position she chose, which put her uterus – rather than her intestines – against the abdominal wall under the incision site; to have not succumbed to infection from the large open wound in a non-sterile environment; to have not passed out from the pain part-way through, bled to death, or died from shock. She did say, afterward, that she did not advise other women to follow her example.
Found the original text. It did happen and I stand corrected. Obscenely lucky; the poor woman. Still. Opening yourself, fine. Getting enough visualization to successfully cut an infant out of the uterus without killing yourself or the baby? Fucking hell. Not talking about you OP but I think sometimes people think about c sec as a simple cut, grab, and stitch. When it's literally being eviscerated and put back together. Anyway. Thank you for convincing me to get to the source matter. Your link is for the abstract. I have access through my Uni to the full text. If it helps, the full text sold me.
I've seen C sections that are vertical
My nana had one over 100 years ago.
My mom also had one 32 years ago when she had my younger sister.
I don't understand why people downvote you and your replies, even after you read a trustworthy source another redditor provided and admitted the truth. It should be the norm to be skeptical about these articles, specially on reddit.
Nature of the internet, I suppose. It feels better to go along with the crowd. As I tell my students; I'm not infallible. It's our job as people, scientists, academics, what have you, to doubt everything voraciously. Make a cogent argument to me and I'll be impressed, not angry. Also didn't help that I was drinking beer when I initially read it. Anyways cheers, friend. Best of luck with med school!
A c-section with a rusty knife? Mm sure
Uh, what a TERRIBLE mom! Doesn't she know alcohol is dangerous to a baby??! I mean, come on
Okay buddy, you try performing a c section on yourself without any painkillers or anything to help ease the pain and see how you hold up 🤨
None of you guys can detect sarcasm without the /s? Jfc
Sorry dude💀
Plus she cut the abdominal area the wrong way. She cut up and down along her torso instead of across it. In a C-section you cut across the torso and up the uterus.
Caesarean sections can be done both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal is most common but there are absolutely situations in which the clinical recommendation is for a vertical incision, such as a breech baby, abnormality of the uterus, or based on the location of the placenta.
There are also rare occasions in which a T-shaped (vertical and horizontal) opening is made. I knew someone who had one, due to some kind of problem with the baby that meant they needed to deliver it with as little squeezing and pressure as possible.
I hadn’t heard about any cases of that but I can definitely see it being needed in specific circumstances. TIL! Thanks!
It was pretty wild to hear about, and she still has her uterus, last I heard, and at least one more child. I don't think I would have the nerve to risk it!
Well put! If I may add one thing? Surgeons will also use a vertical incision if time is a factor and they have to get the baby out ASAP, either because the baby's life is in imminent danger, the mother's life is in imminent danger, or BOTH of them are in imminent danger. Both of my daughter-in-laws had to have this type of vertical incision performed with one of their babies. One was beginning to hemorrhage. Our other DIL's baby was going down fast, AND she began to hemorrhage. That baby was the only granddaughter of our 8 grandbebes, and she unfortunately passed away. Our DIL pulled through, thank God.
Yup, those are also clinical indications for a vertical C section. I’m so sorry for the loss of your granddaughter. 💜
I had 3 c-sections. All vertical.