A traumatised mother who claims her newborn was decapitated during birth in Brazil has said medics tried sewing her head back onto her neck after the ordeal.
Ranielly Santos, 34, and her husband, Victor da Silva, have accused the doctor of ripping off their daughter's head while attempting to deliver the baby who later died.
The family have accused doctors at Hospital das Clinicas in Belo Horizonte, the capital of southeastern Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, of attempting to cover up the stomach-churning tragedy.
"I was treated like an animal", Santos told Brazilian news outlet R7.
She continued: "My mother saw the whole procedure. She opened the outfit, but they tried to stop my mother from opening the outfit, that's when we saw that her neck was sewn, full of marks."
Santos was seven months pregnant when she was admitted to hospital on April 24 due to high blood pressure. Doctors induced her labour a week later.
Da Silva recalled seeing his daughter, Emanuelly, blinking her eyes just moments before he watched how the doctor decapitated her.
The doctor reportedly climbed on Santos' body before they "ripped off the child's head."
Da Silva continued: "By the time they pulled her out she blinked, she was moving. Her little heart, before leaving, was beating."
The couple says the hospital apologised for the botched delivery, offered to cover the funeral expenses and offered to provide a report from the medical examiner.
Lawyer Jennifer Valente said she is hopeful that the police investigation will show that the doctor made several mistakes while delivering the baby.
She alleges that Santos was cut without anaesthesia and has more than 60 stitches.
In a statement to Itatiaia, the hospital said that it "'deeply regretted" what happened and promised to "make every effort to investigate the facts" while an autopsy report was being generated.
The family have not seen their baby yet and a burial service has been planned for when the remains are returned.
In 2018, an unborn baby was decapitated in his mother’s womb following a bungled delivery by an NHS consultant in Dundee, Scotland.
A tribunal heard that Dr Vaishnavy Laxman should have given her patient an emergency caesarean section because the premature infant was in a breech position but instead attempted to carry out the delivery naturally, it was alleged.
The unnamed patient said: “There was no anaesthetic. I said to them ‘It doesn’t feel right, stop it, what’s going on, I don’t want to do it’, but nobody responded to me in any way.
“I would never use the word stillborn; he was not stillborn, he was decapitated.”
Charles Garside QC, a lawyer for the General Medical Council, said: “The baby had a heartbeat, it was slow, but it was not dead. The choice was taken by Dr Laxman to try a vaginal delivery and this was the wrong choice. They should never use a vaginal delivery in that situation.
