Mom and Baby Beat 1-in-a-Million Odds to Survive the ‘Rarest of Pregnancies’

This photo provided by the family shows, from left, Kaila, Suze, Ryu and Andrew Lopez at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles in August 2025 – family photo

A Los Angeles woman recently celebrated the first Christmas with her baby boy, Ryu, born to truly remarkable circumstances.

Ryu developed outside his mother’s womb, and remained hidden for months behind an ovarian cyst that grew to be the size of a basketball. It was so unbelievable, the surgical/OBGYN team that delivered Ryu documented it for a case study in a medical journal.

The manner in which Ryu came into being represents a circumstance that’s “far, far less than 1 in a million,” said Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where Ryu was born. “I mean, this is really insane.”

Now 41, Suze Lopez has always had an irregular cycle, so missed periods—even consecutive ones—are a normal occurrence. It was almost 20 years ago that she was diagnoses with a pair of ovarian cysts, one of which was removed immediately, and one of which was not.

So in early 2025 when Lopez noted her abdomen swelling, her first thought was the cyst. She never felt kicking, and never had morning sickness—and indeed her instinct was at least partly correct.

The pressure and pain in her abdomen grew as days passed, and she was certain that, even if it risked her ability to conceive again, it was time to remove the other cyst which unbeknownst to her had grown to weigh a mind-boggling 22 pounds.

She needed a CT scan to prepare for surgery, which required a pregnancy test for the radiation, and to her utter surprise the test came back positive. Lopez was delighted, but the pain and discomfort grew and soon she had to be hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai where her medical team found a near fully-developed fetus in an amniotic sack lodged against her pelvis.

The term for where the fetus develops is “implants” and the term for a fetus that implants outside of the womb is an “ectopic pregnancy.” Almost all of these go on to rupture and hemorrhage. As such, fetal mortality can be as high as 90% in such cases and birth defects are seen in about 1 in 5 surviving babies, SF Gate reports.

However, because fetal Ryu implanted against the pelvic wall and not against the liver, it was far more manageable, and the reason why Lopez didn’t have more pain earlier.

Lopez and her boy beat the odds, despite a mammoth surgical procedure that both delivered Ryu at 8 pounds and removed the ovarian cyst—together weighing as much as an adult bobcat. During the procedure, Lopez lost half her blood, and had to be continually given transfusions.

“The whole time, I might have seemed calm on the outside, but I was doing nothing but praying on the inside,” Andrew Lopez, Suze’s husband, told SF Gate. “It was just something that scared me half to death, knowing that at any point I could lose my wife or my child.”Instead, they both survived without any maleffects. Ryu “completes” their family, said his mother, and recently celebrated his first Christmas alongside his older sister Kaila. Mom and Baby Beat 1-in-a-Million Odds to Survive the ‘Rarest of Pregnancies

Read More........→July 28, 2026

The brain rewires itself for motherhood. We now know more about how

Rosie Brown, University of Otago; Jenny Clarkson, University of Otago, and Michael Perkinson, University of Otago

Some of the strongest parental instincts happen without conscious thought. The urge to check on a sleeping baby. To stay close. To pick them up when they cry.

Becoming a mother also brings about an extraordinary shift in priorities. As the late British psychotherapist and author Naomi Stadlen wrote, “motherhood can be relentless. The dependency, the need, the constant pull of being someone’s entire world…”

For all mammals, raising young demands enormous time, energy and resources, requiring mothers to place their offspring’s needs ahead of almost everything else.

So just how precisely does the brain make that shift? Our newly published research sought to answer that question.

Using studies in mice, we identified part of the brain circuitry that drives a mother’s urge to interact with her newborn. We found an essential pathway linking a hormone-sensing region of the brain to its reward network.

Activated by the pregnancy hormone placental lactogen and the milk-production hormone prolactin, this pathway helps make caring for a newborn rewarding rather than simply necessary. Remarkably, we were even able to switch that drive on and off experimentally.

Observing a mother’s brain

We focused on a brain region called the medial preoptic area, known for decades to be a key controller of parenting behaviours. Many of its neurons carry receptors for placental lactogen and prolactin.

In earlier studies, we showed that mice without these receptors in this region were unable to care for their offspring after birth. What remained unclear was exactly how these neurons helped drive parenting behaviour.

Using specialised neuroscience techniques to observe these neurons in living mice, we found they became highly active when females came into close contact with pups. The response was much stronger in mothers than in females that had never given birth, with the biggest surge occurring at the very first meeting.

We then traced where these neurons send their signals. A subset of these neurons connect directly to the brain’s reward system, triggering the release of dopamine – the neurochemical that helps make experiences feel rewarding. Recent advances in neuroscience allowed us to watch dopamine being released in real time as mice interacted with their pups.

When we artificially activated this pathway, female mice that had never given birth behaved much more like new mothers. Faced with a barrier separating them from newborn pups, they climbed over it more quickly and repeatedly returned to the pups.

Interestingly, when we blocked the pathway, the opposite happened. Mice no longer showed the normal dopamine surge when meeting the pups and were slower to engage with them. Removing prolactin receptors from the pathway also reduced mother–pup interactions, while leaving other aspects of maternal care largely unchanged.

These new insights help explain why caring for a newborn becomes such a powerful priority after birth. Prolactin acts through this pathway to tune the brain’s reward system, making time with offspring rewarding rather than simply another task.

A peripartum puzzle

Although our work was conducted in mice, the same reward pathways are found in human mothers, with prolactin serving as the key milk-production hormone in all mammals.

The human brain undergoes huge and long-lasting changes during pregnancy, yet very little neuroscience research has focused on females – and even less has looked at how pregnancy causes changes in the brain.

The Ministry of Health estimates that 12–18% of New Zealand women experience depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions during pregnancy or after birth.

The World Health Organisation reports that globally, about 10% of pregnant women and 13% of women who have just given birth experience a mental disorder, primarily depression. In developing countries, this rate is even higher.

Yet there are few treatments that target the biological changes driving these disorders.

Our research aims to understand how the brain adapts during pregnancy and early motherhood to support healthy mood, with the goal of developing better ways to prevent and treat poor peripartum mental health.

We also hope this work will help reduce the stigma faced by parents who struggle to bond with their baby. Rather than personal failing, difficulties with bonding may reflect brain pathways that have not adapted as expected.

Given the profound changes the brain undergoes during pregnancy, it is perhaps unsurprising that this process does not always unfold smoothly. Parents and families deserve better understanding, support and treatment during this critical period.

Rosie Brown, Associate Professor in Physiology, University of Otago; Jenny Clarkson, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Department of Physiology, University of Otago, and Michael Perkinson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Physiology, University of Otago

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→July 01, 2026