The mother of the newborn baby boy flushed down a toilet in China watched in secret as rescuers plucked him alive from a sewer pipe.
The 22-year-old woman is believed to have raised the initial alarm but only confessed to police after they searched her rented room and found toys and blood-stained toilet paper, the Chinese state news agency reported.
Police initially said they were treating the case of as possible attempted homicide, but it was not immediately clear whether the mother would face any criminal charges.
A police officer said she had hidden her pregnancy and claimed the baby fell into the lavatory after she unexpectedly gave birth. ‘The woman was on the scene during the entire rescue process ... and admitted she was the mother when we asked her.’
He said police were still investigating whether she had any ‘malicious intentions’ before deciding on charges.
The single woman, a tenant in the building, told police she could not afford an abortion and secretly delivered the child Saturday afternoon in the toilet.
She said the newborn slipped into the sewer line and that she alerted her landlord of the trapped baby after she could not pull the child out, Zhejiang News said.
The landlord of the building said there were no signs that the birth took place in the restroom and she had not been aware of any recent pregnancies among her tenants.
But the mother told police she cleaned up the toilet after the delivery and that she had managed to hide her pregnancy by wearing loose clothes and tightly wrapping her abdomen.
Nurse Zhang Songhe told the Daily Mail that the mother of the baby was with him in hospital. ‘I don’t know the reason she abandoned the baby.
‘We’re going to take care of the baby. We are not sure when the baby can be discharged.’
She added: 'When the baby arrived here, he was in critical condition.
'We suspect he has a fracture in the top right section of his skull. But now everything has been stabilized.'
Source: Daily Mail UK
