A California family is celebrating Christmas with a new kind of wonder this year, marking the first holiday for a baby doctors say should not have survived.

Suze Lopez, a 41-year-old emergency room nurse from Bakersfield, welcomed her son, Ryu, in August after a pregnancy so rare it left seasoned physicians stunned. Ryu had been growing entirely outside his mother’s womb, concealed behind a massive ovarian cyst that had been monitored for months.

Physicians at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles described the pregnancy as extraordinarily dangerous and statistically improbable. Ectopic pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, occur in roughly one in 30,000 pregnancies. Nearly all are nonviable. Those that reach full term are considered almost impossible.

Dr. John Ozimek, who oversees labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai, told the Associated Press that pregnancies outside the uterus that result in live births are “essentially unheard of — far, far less than one in a million.” He added, “I mean, this is really insane.”

Lopez’s path to motherhood was anything but typical. Since her twenties, she had struggled with recurring ovarian cysts and had already undergone surgery to remove her right ovary. Doctors had been closely watching a cyst that eventually weighed 22 pounds, assuming it was the source of her increasing abdominal pain and pressure.

When Lopez visited doctors to discuss removing the cyst, she was given a routine pregnancy test — one she assumed would be negative. Instead, it came back positive. Even then, she was skeptical. She had experienced no classic pregnancy symptoms and was accustomed to irregular periods and chronic discomfort.

“Because of the large ovarian cyst that had been growing for years, it could have been a false positive, even ovarian cancer,” Lopez said in a Cedars-Sinai press release. “I could not believe that after 17 years of praying and trying for a second child, that I was actually pregnant.”

Days later, Lopez returned to the hospital with severe abdominal pain and dangerously high blood pressure. Imaging revealed a startling truth: her uterus was empty, but a fetus was growing in her abdomen, hidden behind the cyst.

On August 18, surgeons delivered baby Ryu during a complex operation that also removed the cyst. A team of roughly 30 medical professionals worked through the procedure. Lopez lost a significant amount of blood, and Ryu spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, according to SFGate. Both ultimately made a full recovery.

Now home and healthy, Lopez and her son are preparing for their first Christmas together — a milestone few believed possible just months ago.

A spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai confirmed the family’s condition, saying, “The family is doing great. Mom and baby are all thriving.”