Britt Jones
A mortician has explained the process of a coffin birth, and it’s heartbreaking.
When a person dies - pregnant or not - the body will go through its decomposition process, and sometimes, it might lead to this strange phenomenon.
Lauren the Mortician, as she’s aptly known online, has spent many years educating her followers on the horrifying facts that occur after death - mostly to quell the morbid curiosity we all get and to take away that fear.
Like anything living, we all die, and it’s a natural process that has its own steps to completion.
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When it comes to pregnant people, the same process occurs, except, there are little differences due to the softness of the abdomen and swelling where the fetus lives.
Rarely, it can lead to something called a ‘coffin birth'.
Lauren explains it as when ‘a pregnant person dies and their decomposing body actually expels the fetus from the womb postmortem'.
You might be thinking there’s no way it could happen, and despite never coming across it herself, or having heard of another mortician seeing a coffin birth, there have been few documents of it happening throughout history.
She explained: “Coffin births are actually one of the most common questions I get asked about, right up there with 'do bodies sit up in the coffin'?”
“So, what the hell is a coffin birth? I'm so glad you asked,” she added in a video to her YouTube channel.
Lauren explained that essentially, ‘a coffin birth or more formally postmortem fetal extrusion’ occurs when ‘a pregnant person dies and the gases from decomposition build up inside of the abdomen.'
She said: “That pressure continues to rise until, in very rare cases, it pushes the fetus out of the uterus and through the vaginal canal.”
This can happen between 48 to 72 hours after death, but only if the body hasn't been embalmed, autopsied or refrigerated within that time.
Lauren noted that in these cases, the fetus is usually deceased, and it’s all due to the decomposition process.
The mortician explained that the process of decomposition starts with autolysis, which is when cells digest themselves in the body.
Then, putrification takes place when gut bacteria release gases, such as 'methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide'.
These gases then start to puff up the body, and if a body is pregnant, she says 'the uterus is already enlarged and softened'.
The addition of gas pressure from the gut, means the 'vaginal canal becomes the path of least resistance, and when there's nowhere else for the pressure to go, it pushes outward'.
Lauren added: “So, the fetus is expelled, usually in silence, sometimes partially, sometimes fully, always heartbreakingly.”
A few instances of this have happened in recent times, for example, Shannan Watts, who was tragically murdered by her husband Chris Watts at 15 weeks' gestation, was noted to have had a partial expulsion.
Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she was murdered by her husband in 2002. When she was recovered, her unborn son, Connor, was a mile away, having been expelled.