Woman who performed her own c-section does not recommend it

Filed under: Newspapers, Weird but TrueThis is kind of old news -- Ines Ramirez performed a c-section on herself back in 2000 -- but this is the first I'd heard of it, and I feel compelled to share. Eight years ago, 40-year-old Ines Ramirez was alone in her cabin in a remote area of Mexico when she felt labour pains start. Her husband was off drinking in a cantina and the nearest midwife (and telephone) were more than fifty miles away. As the pains heightened, Ramirez did what any desperate and completely ballsy Mama would do: she sat down, swilled from a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and used a kitchen knife to cut open her abdomen omigod writing those words makes me feel like I am going to slither right off this seat.Ramirez operated on herself for an hour -- that is 60 long, painstaking Minutes from Hell, and after making a cut in her own abdomen, severed the umbilical cord with scissors and became unconscious. When she came to, she wrapped up her bleeding abdomen and asked her 6-year-old son to fetch help.A village health assistant later arrived to stitch Ramirez and tend to her live newborn. Both Mama and baby lived, and Ramirez is thought to be the only woman to have ever performed a c-section on herself, and lived to tell the tale. She does not recommend the procedure to fellow mothers-to-be. Man. I will have to file this story for future consideration for the next time I am feeling wussy about anything.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments