Woman Comes Forward To Claim Baby In Sewer Pipe

By: Ekele Peter Agbo on May 30, 2013 - 6:57am

The mother of a five-pound Chinese newborn that was found in a sewer pipe below a squat toilet has come forward.

The 22-year-old woman was reported to have said the whole thing was an accident. According to police, the woman was unmarried and chose to keep her pregnancy secret. On Saturday the woman said she unexpectedly gave birth. The woman told police she delivered the child in the toilet and tried to catch the baby, but he slipped through the hole in the squat toilet.

The woman said she tried to pull the baby out, but when he slipped into the sewer line she alerted her landlord. She watched as crews worked to rescue the baby, but did not identify herself as the mother until police confronted her after finding baby toys and blood-stained toilet paper in her apartment.

Firefighters had to cut the 10-cm sewer line with the baby still inside. The infant and the pipe were taken to a nearby hospital where doctors worked gingerly to remove him. He remains in the hospital and has been named 59 after the number on his incubator.

The pipe was not wide enough for the firefighter’s hand to reach down to get to the new-born baby trapped inside. But, after a two-hour rescue operation, as shown in this series of startling pictures, “Baby No 59” was miraculously retrieved from a section of sewage pipe from beneath a toilet in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang at the weekend.

Emergency crews were called to an apartment block in the city of Jinhua last Saturday after residents alerted authorities to the sound of a baby crying. What they discovered when they arrived has sent shockwaves across China.

Jinhua residents who watched the rescue footage arrived at the hospital with contributions of nappies, baby clothes and powdered milk.

One police officer had earlier on Tuesday, suggested that the mother concealed her pregnancy and the baby fell into the toilet when she unexpectedly gave birth. Other reports said the child was a few days old when the mother accidentally dropped it into the lavatory. 

The police officer who pleaded anonymity said his colleagues would continue to investigate whether the mother “had any malicious intentions” before deciding if charges should be filed against her. Police had no information about the baby’s father.

It is not uncommon for babies to be abandoned in China, which has imposed a one-child policy for more than three decades. Couples can face fines if they violate the policy.

But this latest case has led to widespread soul-searching about the country’s moral state on Sina Weibo, the microblogging site which is China’s version of Twitter.

 One user, Weixian de Shuozhuo, wrote: “This kind of thing makes me speechless. Since I was young, I’ve seen deserted babies on trash heaps. It seems that in Chinese people’s eyes, throwing a baby away is not an evil thing.”