The woman who delivered without a placenta

I was expecting a late night (9 pm!) phone call from the states when the health officer Bezu came to get me. A woman had delivered at home but her placenta hadn’t come out – a relatively common occurrence called a “retained placenta.” It requires manual removal by a trained person. Our midwives and health officer do this procedure regularly so I wondered why they were calling me. Bezu explained as we walked to our Labor and Delivery room. “The umbilical cord got sucked into the uterus, and her cervix is completely closed now.” Not being overly experienced in obstetrics, I didn’t question the anatomy of this scenario and went to examine the woman. Her cervix was indeed closed and the cord was nowhere to be found. I was so focused on how we were going to help this woman that I didn’t think too much about how the cord got “sucked into the uterus.” After some maneuvers and further examination, it became clear that there was no cord and no retained placenta in her uterus. Everything was…normal. The two possible explanations both seem far-fetched. A baby delivering without a placenta would be monumental and biologically impossible. A family losing a placenta (about the size of a person’s foot) in their home simply comical.