AJMAN // Tiny Tala Othman is a medical miracle.
Tala amazed her parents and doctors when she was born 11 weeks early, at 1.45 kilograms, encased in her amniotic sac.
Her Egyptian mother, Eman Ahmed, panicked when she saw her newborn still firmly curled in a foetal position in the sac – a bag of clear, pale fluid inside the womb where the unborn baby develops and grows.
Ms Ahmed thought her daughter had not survived the birth.
“I didn’t realise at first that I had already delivered the baby because I couldn’t see her inside the amniotic sac,” she said. “We were in shock.”
Ms Ahmed began having stomach pains about 10am on May 16 at her Ajman home, but did not realise she was in labour.
“I felt a lot of pain but at first I thought that it was only a stomach pain,” she said. “Then the pain started to increase even more. I did not know that I was having labour symptoms.”
Her husband, Mohammed Othman, phoned National Ambulance. “They took my address and called me back to tell me what my wife should do until the ambulance arrived.”
But Tala arrived in the world 10 minutes later, at 10.10am.
Moments later, three emergency medical technicians from the ambulance service arrived.
“After losing hope my daughter was still alive, I heard her crying,” Mr Othman said. “This is all the favour of God and that of the paramedics.”
An estimated one in 80,000 babies are born with “cauls”, or full face masks formed by amniotic fluids. Much rarer are those born with the full sac intact.
Ms Ahmed said she told paramedics: “It is over, the baby died.”
Mohammed Rawashdeh, the technician who helped in the delivery, was astonished when he saw the newborn.
“Of course it’s a strange feeling when you see a newborn trapped inside an amniotic sac, which is such a rare occurrence,” he said.
“The whole team was so surprised, despite the fact we deal with stressful and emergency situations every day.”
Typically, the amniotic sac breaks on its own during birth, which is commonly referred to as a mother’s water breaking, or during a Caesarean section when it is cut by a surgeon to deliver the baby.
While she was inside the amniotic sac Tala continued receiving oxygen through the placenta, taking her first proper breath after the medical workers broke the sac.
“I was so happy and thanked God for her survival,” Ms Ahmed said. “First it was God’s will, and the next credit goes to the fast response of National Ambulance and its staff in dealing with the situation.”
Tala is still receiving medical treatment at Sheikh Khalifa General Hospital in Ajman but her parents hope to take her home this month.
jbell@thenational.ae
