Rachel Schoger of Caldwell, Idaho, had been trying to have a baby for two years and eight months — a grueling wait interrupted by three positive pregnancy tests and three unexplained miscarriages.

After a fourth positive test, she went to her doctor for answers. The news was devastating. “It’s ectopic,” Schoger recalled the doctor saying after a hormone test and an ultrasound. “I was so upset because we’d been trying for so long.”

An ectopic pregnancy is one that occurs outside the womb, usually in one of the fallopian tubes. Because the fetus cannot survive and the mom could suffer life-threatening internal bleeding, ectopic pregnancies, which may account for as many as one in 40 pregnancies, are terminated at the earliest sign. Schoger’s doctor recommended using methotrexate — a chemotherapy drug that would save her and her fallopian tube, and kill the doomed fetus.

“I have three other kids at home,” said Schoger, who was 29 at the time. “I couldn’t take the risk.”

Schoger was given two high-dose shots of methotrexate in the fatty tissue above her hips to abort her pregnancy, which was four weeks and five days along. Days later, she started having nightmares about a baby crying out in pain inside her. So when she returned to the doctor for a second round of shots a week later, she insisted on a follow-up ultrasound for peace of mind.

“I needed it to calm me down, to know I was doing the right thing,” she said.

As the ultrasound technician rolled the probe over Schoger’s pelvis, her jaw suddenly dropped. Schoger was still pregnant, and the fetus was in her uterus where it belonged.

Despite advances in medical imaging, roughly 40 percent of pregnancies diagnosed as ectopic are later revealed to be normal, intrauterine pregnancies, according to a 2002 study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

And for women treated with methotrexate, the lapse can be catastrophic.

“Those fetuses that are misdiagnosed as ectopic and were actually in the uterus receive high doses of a teratogenic drug during early stage of development, and that causes malformations,” said Dr. Yaron Finkelstein, an emergency physician at Sick Kids Hospital and associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto. “This is a serious problem, and one that’s probably overlooked.”

Finkelstein and colleagues described the effects of methotrexate on eight misdiagnosed ectopic pregnancies in a study published in the January issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Three of the pregnancies ended in miscarriage within two weeks after the injection; three were terminated surgically after the mothers were warned of the potential birth defects; and the remaining two were born — one stillborn at 30 weeks, the other born with severe malformations at 37 weeks.

“We’re not sure how many more cases like this are out there,” said Finkelstein, adding that doctors have no incentive to report misdiagnosed ectopic pregnancies. “We wanted to highlight this phenomenon and bring it to awareness.”

Schoger, who was not part of the study, decided to follow through on her pregnancy despite the risks. And in January 2006, she gave birth to Seraphine.

“She was beautiful,” said Schoger. “She had 10 fingers, 10 toes. She just looked so good.”

But relief quickly gave way to panic as nurses struggled to take Seraphine’s temperature. The baby, who, against all odds, appeared to be normal, had no rectum. She also lacked a vagina and a uterus, and has a malformed spinal cord. These are all birth defects Schoger is convinced stemmed from methotrexate exposure in the womb. She filed a lawsuit against the doctor and a jury trial is set for January 2013.

Finkelstein stressed that diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy is tricky, and that failing to diagnose a pregnancy as ectopic can have a dire outcome, too. “If the woman is stable, one option is to admit her for 24 hours or send her home and ask her to come back for another [human chorionic gonadotropin] test and ultrasound.” Another option is to come up with a safer drug — “one that terminates ectopic pregnancies but is not teratogenic to normal, intrauterine pregnancies.”

The neo-natal unit at the Royal is undergoing a deep clean

The Department of Health has confirmed it is treating what appears to be another case of Pseudomonas at the Royal Maternity’s neo-natal unit.

Over the past fortnight, three babies have died after contracting the bacterial infection.

Laboratory tests have yet to confirm the new case, but it is understood the child is very ill with the symptoms of the infection.

An investigation is continuing to try to find the source of the outbreak.

A deep clean was carried out at the weekend and the health minister said the water system is under scrutiny.

In order to kill off the infection, hydrogen peroxide gas was blown inside the sealed intensive care room via a large vaporizing machine.

This permeates everything, including cupboards, drawers, surfaces, bins and any equipment.

Specialists spent the day investigating a range of possible sources.

Taps have been removed, while sinks and the interior of pipes have been checked.

Health Minister Edwin Poots said his department was fully across the investigation.

“We have identified a number of potential problems,” Mr Poots said.

“We will be getting a report back tomorrow, all being well, in terms of the potential for it to come from a water source problem.

“That has been the case in other outbreaks of Pseudomonas elsewhere and that’s currently being investigated.

“We can’t suggest at this stage that’s what the cause of the problem is, but it’s certainly one of the areas being investigated.”

Traces on skin

Five babies have traces of the bacterial infection on their skin.

While it is not affecting their health, they are being closely monitored to make sure it does not enter their blood stream.

Chief Medical Officer Michael McBride said antibiotics might be given as a precaution.

He also warned it might not be possible to identify the source of the infection, as the efforts to eradicate it, may have erased traces of how it started.

“We will look widely we will seek to identify and potential source and indeed deal with that source, but it may not be possible to do so.

“We know from experience elsewhere that we can bring this infection under control through good infection control practices.”

The first baby died on 6 January and the second on 13 January. A third baby died on Thursday night.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is found widely in soil and stagnant water. It does not usually cause illness in healthy people but can pose a serious threat to people with weak immune systems.

Namishay Clarke said she called police because she was concerned when she had not seen the Warrens’ 2-year-old boy in more than two months.

Brendan Kennedy/Toronto Star/Brendan Kennedy/Toronto Star

KINGSTON, JAMAICA — There were no baby clothes on the line.

That’s how Namishay Clarke knew she couldn’t trust Stephanie and Alphonso Warren’s assurances that everything was okay with Joshua, their 2-year-old boy, who seemed to simply disappear from the Clifton Rd. neighbourhood one day in late October.

The Canadian mother and Jamaican father of the toddler, who was found dead and partially decomposed inside a suitcase here last week, were criminally charged Sunday with concealing the child’s death.

Once again in police custody for shocking allegations of abuse of their own children, the Warrens are the same parents who pleaded guilty to abandoning their 8-month-old daughter, dubbed “Baby Angelica,” in a frigid Toronto stairwell four years ago. They are scheduled to appear in court here on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Toronto police made contact with their Jamaican counterparts to apprise them of the link between the two cases.

Jamaican police were not immediately available Sunday to clarify whether the investigation had been completed, or if the couple could still face additional charges relating to the death of their child.

Police were called to investigate the Warrens’ residence on Jan. 15 by neighbours who had grown suspicious and concerned when they had not seen the couple’s toddler — identified by police as Jeshurun Warren, but known to neighbours as “Baby Joshua” — in more than two months.

But after two police officers first walked away satisfied with Stephanie Warren’s explanation that the child was fine and staying elsewhere with family, an angry neighbourhood mob formed.

“All of us decided that Sunday morning: We had to know,” said Courtney Boothe, who was at the front of the mob that eventually stormed the residence. Boothe says he was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife by Alphonso, who had been hiding in a back room.

Another neighbour made the grisly discovery in a separate room, where towels had been stuffed in the window and door frames as a makeshift seal. Cellphone photos show the toddler’s corpse, bow-legged and appearing to be partially mummified.

Neighbours describe what followed as a cacophony of emotions: a crowd of about 100 people — enraged, grieving and repulsed — wept as they hurled stones at Alphonso. Others vomited at the site of the corpse, then chased the father with sticks.

Police could not control the crowd.

“Really and truly, we expected a bigger search,” said Clarke, who said she was the first to call police. “We thought we’d have to use shovels and dig up the backyard. We never expected the evidence to be in her room there waiting for us.”

A pathologist has confirmed the child was not a victim of foul play, according to Jamaican police.

The cause of death is still unknown, though neighbours said before Stephanie was taken away by police she told them the child died after eating ackee, a local fruit which can be poisonous if consumed before it has ripened. Other neighbours spoke of the Warrens’ staunch resistance to any medical interventions.

The couple evaded Toronto police for three-and-a-half months in 2008 as investigators searched across North America to find the parents of the abandoned, nameless child, who became known as “Baby Angelica” for her bright, cherubic features.

Eventually, the Warrens — who insisted they were not the child’s parents, even after DNA evidence confirmed the relation — were arrested about 100 kilometres west of Toronto.

“Baby Angelica” was adopted into a foster family. Her real name is protected by a publication ban.

The Warrens left Toronto shortly after the conclusion of their court proceedings in April 2009. Both parents pleaded guilty to abandoning their baby, but only Alphonso Warren was convicted criminally.

He was given a 22-month jail sentence, but granted two-for-one credit for the 11-months served in pre-trial custody and released. Stephanie Warren was found guilty under the Ontario Child and Family Services Act and ordered to pay a $300 fine.

Three of the couple’s other children were removed from the home at the time of the arrests.

Children’s Aid workers later said those children — all under 6 at the time — appeared malnourished and developmentally delayed when they were taken into custody.

Patricia Smith-Bell, the deceased toddler’s godmother, said Alphonso was vague about his Canadian legal troubles when he returned to his hometown.

“He said the government in Canada took the other babies, and he didn’t want this baby to be taken away, so he came back to Jamaica.”

The miracle of life: Another hyperalloy combat chassis, ready for action.

(Credit:
Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)

“Eraserhead” baby, meet your match.

It seems engineers and tinkerers never tire of creating horrific human simulacra in robot baby form, or even robot fetus form. But the sheer nightmarish genius of this latest unholy spawn gives one pause. Behold it in the video below.

The silently mewling babe is a collection of whirring servomotors and flailing claw-arms, seemingly powered by unseen mechanisms beneath its blanket.

Its movements are perfectly lifelike, and yet its appearance is so alien-death machine-like that I get an overwhelming urge to cast it far into the Uncanny Valley from whence it came.

The Uncanny Valley, of course, is that hypothesized zone in which robots or artificial characters are lifelike enough to freak us out if they have disturbing imperfections.

Lack of skin is one. If this synthetic tot were fully fleshed out, it might be very endearing.

It was apparently made by animatronics expert Chris Clarke, a special-effects wizard whose credits include a puppet horse used in Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse.”

This isn’t Clarke’s first animatronic baby; an older video shows a charming babe created for an ad that looks almost exactly like the real thing.

Another video that purports to be his showreel is an impressive parade of freakishly believable creatures from dinosaurs to talking pigs to flying machines.

The latest baby was apparently made for a soap opera, and doubtless will spare a real baby from spending long hours in front of a camera.

I just shudder to think what’ll happen when it gets an agent.

(Via IEEE Spectrum)

The California premature infant described as the tiniest “miracle baby” is finally home after doctors said she defied all odds.

Melinda Star Guido was born a tiny preemie of 24 weeks, weighing just 9.5 ounces and described as being smaller than the size of a hand in August.

With skin so thin it could not protect her from infection, Melinda wasn’t expected to live more than a few days.

After more than 16 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, she now weighs 4.5 pounds.

On Friday, Melinda was released from the hospital to go home with her proud parents.

“I feel great to take her home after four and a half months,” said mother Haydee Ibarra. “I’m just grateful to finally spend the whole night with her. It’s great. There are no words to say.”

Melinda was treated soon after she was born for an eye disorder common to preemies, and had surgery to close an artery.

Now, the third smallest baby to ever survive, her doctors are calling her recovery and development a miracle.

“The good news is the baby is doing what the baby is supposed to do: feed, look around, sleep, and gain weight,” said Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, chief of neonatology at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Around 7,500 babies are born in the U. S. each year weighing less than a pound. Of those, only about 10 percent survive.

“I just feel blessed. I just feel great that she’s here with us,” Ibarra said.

To her parents, Melinda may feel like a five month old baby, but to her doctors, she is only a month old.

Doctors say the next six years of her life are crucial, but now, all of those precious years can be spent at home with her loving family.

The baby, along with his three siblings, was removed in August from the home of Nicholas and Andrea Murrey, both 29.

According to court records, the infant, who weighed 7 pounds when he was born on June 24, weighed the same amount when he was taken from the home nearly eight weeks later.

Charges were filed Wednesday against the couple.

Once the baby was placed in foster care, the foster mother took him to a pediatrician, who diagnosed the infant as marasmic, a condition often associated with starvation, according to a complaint filed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

On Dec. 27, after about 4½ months in foster care, the baby weighed 14 pounds, records state. The pediatrician who treated him said she believes he hadn’t gained weight previously because he wasn’t getting enough to eat.

Authorities became concerned about the Murrey children on Aug. 16, when Andrea Murrey took her 4-year-old daughter to Bayshore Medical Center’s emergency room in Pasadena for treatment of vomiting and diarrhea.

Hospital personnel contacted Child Protective Services because the 4-year-old was “dirty and unkempt” and had bruises, the complaint stated.

A CPS caseworker was assigned to the family, and the children were removed from the home because they all appeared to be malnourished, particularly the baby, the complaint stated.

His mother told Pasadena police that she intended to take the baby to a pediatrician “because he was so skinny” but couldn’t because the couple’s roommate wouldn’t let her use the household vehicle.

Nicholas Murrey told police he knew the baby needed medical attention and said he had told his wife to take the baby to the emergency room, but she didn’t.

The boy’s father said he couldn’t take him to the hospital because he worked nights and cared for the children during the day, according to court records.

Nicholas Murrey also said he was not on good terms with the boy’s mother and she would call the police on him if he took the baby to the hospital, records state.

carol.christian@chron.com

Chris Langer / msnbc.com

Jennifer and Jason Schiraldi, of Campbell, Ohio, struggled for two years to have a child, without success. A ground-breaking technique at Cleveland Clinic, however, led to the birth of their daughter, Kenley, 9 months.

Everyone knows it takes just one sperm and one egg to make a baby, but nature usually provides extra, just to be sure.

In the case of 9-month-old Kenley Schiraldi of Campbell, Ohio, however, there was no back-up for the biology, requiring instead what scientists – and her parents – are calling a modern-day miracle.

Kenley was born last April, the result of a long-shot infertility treatment, a case Cleveland Clinic IVF experts say is the first time a single sperm has been frozen, injected into a single egg — and resulted in a healthy pregnancy.

“It was better than hitting the lottery,” said Jennifer Schiraldi, 33, Kenley’s mom. “This never happens.”

Indeed, even Nina Desai, director of the IVF laboratory at the Cleveland Clinic, hasn’t calculated the odds of Kenley’s conception, which occurred even though her father, Jason, produced no sperm in the regular way, and her mom had trouble producing eggs.

“It was like a shot in the dark,” said Desai, who has developed a ground-breaking technique that can find and store tiny amounts of sperm — or even just one — in a drop of fluid inside a straw as thin as a sewing needle. The sperm can then be frozen and later thawed for use in an in-vitro fertilization technique known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI.

The new method follows nearly two decades of efforts to save the smallest possible amounts of human sperm by storing the cells inside hamster eggs or on tiny nylon loops for easier retrieval later. It’s expected to be a boon for men with very low sperm counts, a severe form of the male factor infertility that can contribute to the 1 in 8 couples in the U.S. who struggle to conceive.

Jennifer Schiraldi, a hospital dietician, and her husband, Jason, 35, a cardiac catheterization nurse, came to the Cleveland Clinic in 2009, after trying for two years to get pregnant, with no success. High school sweethearts who’ve been married nine years, they were young and healthy with no warning that they’d have trouble having a baby.

“I’d never had any woman problems and you never think it’s the guy,” recalled Jennifer.

In fact, however, tests showed that the Schiraldis were among 30 percent to 40 percent of infertile couples with problems attributed to the man.

“They took a sample and we found out immediately: There’s no sperm,” Jennifer Schiraldi recalls.

The couple could have stopped there, but they decided to pursue aggressive infertility treatment, including a testicular biopsy, which involves surgery to remove tiny bits of tissue to test for evidence of sperm.

The procedure was difficult, admits Jason Schiraldi, but he said he was determined to try everything.

“We always wanted kids and I didn’t want to be the one who couldn’t do that for her,” he said.

But searching for Jason’s sperm proved even harder than imagined. As the surgeon sent down samples, Desai’s lab staffers, three in all, used microscopes to scan the tissue for any sign of viable cells.

A typical male produces 60 million to 100 million lively sperm in a single ejaculation.

After searching Jason’s tissue for a total of nine hours, the scientists found — one.

“We froze that one sperm and we saved the rest of the specimens,” recalled Desai. “We really had no hope of it doing anything.”

Because any pregnancy with so few sperm would require in-vitro fertilization, Jennifer Schiraldi had to harvest her eggs. But when they went to retrieve them, doctors found she made far fewer eggs than normal.

“I got 12 but only eight were good,” she recalled.

IVF experts searched the rest of Jason’s samples, hoping to fertilize as many of Jennifer’s eggs as possible. When they found only a couple dead sperm, the one frozen viable sperm was the only option.

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“They got the one sperm and implanted the one egg,” Jennifer Schiraldi said.

Desai admits she wasn’t optimistic.

“People don’t usually get pregnant when they have only one egg,” she explained, noting that it’s far more common to implant two or three embryos to make sure pregnancy occurs.

But then came the exciting part. With the help of a careful ICSI procedure, the egg was successfully fertilized. Three days later, it had divided into a viable embryo and was implanted in Jennifer’s womb.

Sixteen days after that, she was confirmed pregnant.

“It was very emotional,” said Jason Schiraldi.

Back at the clinic, the staff shared congratulations.

“I was really surprised when I saw she had a positive pregnancy,” said Desai. “This has been one of the real miracles in our IVF program.”

The pregnancy was normal but taxing, with a fair amount of nausea and other ordinary complications, Jennifer Schiraldi said. And the baby was in the breech position, which required a C-section.

But when Kenley Karlin Schiraldi arrived on April 20, her parents said there was no doubt about what had occurred.

“Miracle is not a large enough word to describe it,” said Jason Schiraldi. “Of all the fascinating and amazing things we do in the health care field, it’s amazing that this happened to us.”

Jennifer Schiraldi says she looks at her daughter every day and marvels that she’s here.

“It’s crazy. Sometimes I’m, like, ‘Did we cheat?’” she said. “People ask if we’re going to have another child, but we made it this far to get her. I don’t know if I even want to press my luck.”

Desai and her colleagues plan to use the new sperm storage technique to help other patients with very low sperm counts. Next week, in fact, another man with the same problem is scheduled for the treatment.

Jason Schiraldi said other couples should be encouraged by their experience.

“People think once you’re stuck, you’re stuck,” he said. “But there are people who can make wonderful things happen.”

Related stories:

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False-positive screenings scare parents of newborns

Pregnant with cancer, healing for two

(PEOPLE.com) — Older siblings often want to help with baby names, but their choices sometimes aren’t the most desirable.

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck are learning this as they prepare for their third child — and are getting an avalanche of suggestions for names from daughters Violet, 6, and Seraphina, 3.

“Our girls are working on names. At first they were definitely Disney. It was like, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse Affleck,” the “Butter” star, 39, said Wednesday on “The Tonight Show.”

“And then they’ve moved on. Then it was Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Smee.”

With those character names not really cutting it, the girls moved on to other strategies.

“They’re coming up with lists, and coming in and saying, ‘Let’s have a baby-naming contest! Let’s have a baby-naming poll!’” Garner, who’s due in the spring, says. “They ask everyone, cause they just want to know. But we’re not telling.”

Garner knows the sex of the baby, but declined to reveal it on the show. Asked if her husband wants a boy, Garner — who has said she wants a third girl — said she actually didn’t know.

“I would have thought so. At first I think I really thought so,” she said. “And then he kind of said, ‘Well, we have girls. We know how to do girls. My girls love me. I’m the big guy in the house.’ So, now I’m not sure.”

See the full article at PEOPLE.com.

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