The only person that could help her out of this mess was her husband, who had helped her with all the previous births. Oh, he was sitting in a cantina somewhere, drinking his ass off? Never mind. Twelve hours of near-incapacitating pain pass. Still no baby, or husband for that matter. Perez knew she had to do something.

Via BBC News

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At midnight, instead of curling up and giving in to the welcoming darkness that offered refuge from the mind-numbing pain, Perez grabbed a sturdy kitchen knife, had three shots of what was probably tequila and set to work.

She started sawing her belly open in a C-section fashion, despite having no medical training whatsoever. It took her three attempts to get to the uterus, and the wound she ended up inflicting on herself was almost twice as large as a normal C-section incision. All this, and we cannot stress this enough, using a random kitchen knife she had probably been using to chop up ingredients for the dinner stew a few hours earlier.

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After what she estimates was about an hour, Perez finally excavated a healthy baby boy. After cutting the umbilical cord, she finally realized what the hell she had done -- and fainted. For just a couple of minutes, though. She had no time to black out. After waking up, her wounds still open, she proceeded to wrap the newborn up in a sweater and send her son to get help.

When we factor in the unsanitary conditions, blood loss, shock and, well, common sense, the ensuing rescue party that arrived a few hours later should've found a very dead woman in a pool of her own blood. Instead, they found Perez (with her wound still open, remember) and the newborn both very much alive and conscious. She survived the following eight-hour car trip to hospital -- because at that point there was probably nothing short of a point blank nuclear missile that could hurt her anymore -- and made a full recovery.