Mexican Woman Performs Self Caesarean
RIO TALEA, Mexico [JP] - Alone in her cabin high in the mountains of southern Mexico, Ines Ramirez Perez felt pounding labour pains. Since she had given birth to a stillborn baby girl three years earlier, she was concerned for her unborn child. The nearest clinic was more than 50 miles away over rough terrain and inhospitable roads - and her husband was drinking at a cantina. Her home town of Rio Talea has 500 people with only one phone – but not at her cabin or the cantina.
At midnight, on March 5, 2000 - after 12 hours of constant pain, the 40-year-old mother of six sat down on a wooden bench, drank from a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and used a 6-inch kitchen knife to cut open her stomach. Using the light of a dim bulb, Ramirez cut through her skin in a diagonal line from across her stomach to below her naval (a typical C-section incision is well below the naval). After operating on herself for an hour, she reached inside her uterus to pull out her baby boy. Then she severed the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors and passed out.
When she regained consciousness, she wrapped a sweater around her bleeding abdomen and asked her 6-year-old son, Benito, to run for help. Several hours later, the village health assistant, Leon Cruz, found Ramirez alert and lying beside her live baby, Orlando. Cruz sewed her 7-inch incision with an available needle and thread.
Cruz & another assistant carried Ramirez up vertical horse paths to the town’s only road, then drove 2 ½ hours to the nearest clinic. After basic emergency attention, Ramirez was transferred (bounced) for eight hours in the backs of two pickup trucks before arriving at the San Pablo Huixtepec hospital, about 240 miles southeast of Mexico City. Ramirez left the hospital four days later, and today her scar is almost invisible – and Orlando is a playful 4-year-old.
Describing her experience in her native Zapotec language, Ramirez 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.” Asked how she was able to perform the operation, she replied, “I had slaughtered chickens and other animals.”
By sitting forward in the traditional Indian birthing position instead of lying down, Ramirez unknowingly ensured that her uterus was directly under the skin and that she would not cut her intestines. After having her tubes tied, she says she would never recommend her desperate action to other women: “It was very painful, and people could die.”
Ines Ramirez is recognized internationally as a modern miracle - believed to be the only woman known to have performed a successful Caesarean section on herself.
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