Baby girl born in toilet, survives

Emergency workers frantically worked for 30 minutes to remove a newborn baby girl stuck in a public toilet after her mother mistakenly gave birth to her there.

"The rescuers could see the baby and hear her crying sometimes in the pit," said an e-mail reply from the Chaoyang district fire brigade the English-language China Daily reported. "They broke the nearby pits by hand so they could reach the girl without endangering her." The mother, Cai Qulin, 36, went into labor, nine days ahead of her due date, and said she urgently needed to use the bathroom before going to the hospital in Beijing. But as Qulin squatted at the public toilet, early on Saturday afternoon, the baby was born and the infant girl fell into the pit, MSNBC writes. According to Vnexpress News, Zhang Tao, Cai's husband, had called the police and ambulance to help his wife. "My sister-in-law and niece are both OK now. As soon as doctor permits it, we'll bring the baby home," said Zhang Zhenghua, the baby’s aunt told China Daily. It's not the first time a baby has born in a toilet. Unlike Qulin's case, many babies are unwanted. In November 2001, The New York Times reported on an abandoned newborn boy, found alive after being born in the toilet and spending the first five hours of life in a restroom garbage can. ''He was so cold, he had curled tight into a fetal position,'' ambulance crew volunteer Tricia Norman recalled. ''He had bumps on his head, maybe from hitting the toilet when he was born.'' Most are in deep denial about their pregnancies, and remain so even after their babies are born. They give birth alone and secretly, usually over a toilet, and kill their babies moments after birth, Neil S. Kaye, a forensic psychiatrist and assistant professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia told the Times. “They don’t really think about it as a baby,” Professor Kaye said. “They see it as a foreign object; they want it out and done with and gone.”