When Suze Lopez gave birth to her second child at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, doctors and family alike described the moment with a word rarely used in modern medicine: miracle.
Lopez, a 41-year-old emergency room nurse from Bakersfield, had spent nearly two decades trying to conceive again with her husband, Andrew. What neither of them could have imagined was that when pregnancy finally came, their baby would grow not inside her uterus, but deep inside her abdomen — tucked behind a 22-pound ovarian mass and dangerously close to vital organs.
From left, Maria Columbo and Zahra Farhan, Registered nurses from the pediatric care unit at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in the City of Poughkeepsie on April 22, 2022. Vassar Brothers Medical Center Pediatric Unit
According to Cedars-Sinai, Lopez’s pregnancy was an extraordinarily rare abdominal ectopic pregnancy, a condition so uncommon that most do not progress beyond the earliest stages. In Lopez’s case, the pregnancy continued all the way to full term.
Their son, Ryu Jesse Lopez, was born Aug. 18 at 41 weeks, weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces. His middle name, Jesse, means “gift from God.” Both mother and baby are now healthy and spending the holidays at home, SFGATE reported.
“He is our gift,” Andrew Lopez said in a statement. “Ryu and Suze are my miracles. Many prayers have been answered.”
The path to Ryu’s birth began unexpectedly. Lopez discovered she was pregnant during routine testing before a scheduled surgery to remove a massive ovarian cyst that had been growing for years. At first, doctors feared the test result could be a false positive — or worse, a sign of ovarian cancer.
“I could not believe that after 17 years of praying and trying for a second child, that I was actually pregnant,” Lopez said.
She shared the news with her husband during a Los Angeles Dodgers game, but celebration quickly gave way to fear. Lopez developed abdominal pain and rushed to Cedars-Sinai, where doctors made a startling discovery.
Dr. John Ozimek found that Lopez’s uterus was empty. Instead, the baby was growing in her abdomen, pressed into a small pocket of space near her liver, hidden behind the enormous cyst.
“A pregnancy this far outside the uterus that continues to develop is almost unheard of,” Ozimek said. “We discovered a nearly full-term baby boy in a very small space.”
When Lopez went into labor, the delivery became a high-risk surgical operation. Dr. Michael Manuel assisted by lifting the cyst out of the way so the medical team could safely reach and deliver the baby.
Moments after Ryu was born, Lopez began hemorrhaging severely.
“Every second matters,” said Dr. Michael Sanchez, who helped manage the crisis. The team administered 11 units of blood using specialized rapid-delivery equipment to stabilize her.
In the aftermath, Lopez focused on healing so she could return home to her newborn, her husband, and her teenage daughter, Kaila. She credits one nurse, Carmen Chavez, with helping guide her family through the ordeal.
“She was my guardian angel,” Lopez said. “She made sure we understood everything I was facing. She even helped us tell my daughter about the pregnancy.”
Now recovered, Lopez says she views every day with her son as a gift.
“God gave me this baby,” she said, “so that he could be an example to the world that miracles — modern-day miracles — do happen.”
For doctors at Cedars-Sinai, the case stands as one of the rarest pregnancies they have ever seen. For the Lopez family, it is something simpler, and far more profound: a child they waited nearly 20 years to meet, delivered against every medical odd.
