'Caul' This Baby A Little Miracle

This is the incredibly rare moment a child is born while still inside its amniotic sac.Show more

The video shows the baby lying on a hospital table inside the fully-intact clear sac which covers the whole body. This life affirming event occurred in Spain. The video shows the second half of a C-section twin birth, the first twin was being stabilized off camera as the second baby surprised everyone by entering the world "en caul".

If you paid attention in your biology classes at school, then you would know an unborn baby grows inside the protective membrane of his or her mother’s amniotic sac.

The sac typically bursts on its own, causing the mother’s water to break Everyone has heard of the moment in a woman’s pregnancy when her “water breaks”. Releasing of the amniotic fluid signals the beginning of the birth of the new born.

That's how 99.987% of the babies are born - without this being 'housed' in the amniotic sac. However, there is the 1 in 80,000 chance that baby comes into the world with the baby still in the sac that fully in tact.

This awe inspiring event is termed an "en-caul" birth when the infant is born inside the entire amniotic sac. The sac balloons out at birth, with the amniotic fluid and child remaining inside the unbroken or sometimes partially broken membrane. Most "en-caul" births are premature.

The removal of the membrane is somewhat complex - although in the video it looks pretty simple - it's not, it needs surgical hands. If done correctly, the attending practitioner will place a small incision in the membrane across the nostrils so that the child can breathe. The loops are then carefully un-looped from behind the ears. Then, the remainder of the caul can be either peeled back very carefully from the skin, or gently rubbed with a sheet of paper, which is then peeled away. If removed too quickly, the caul can leave wounds on the infant's flesh at the attachment points, which may leave permanent scars.

Some Early Modern European traditions linked caul birth to the ability to defend fertility and the harvest against the forces of evil, particularly witches and sorcerers.

Folklore developed suggesting that possession of a baby's caul would give its bearer good luck and protect that person from death by drowning. Cauls were therefore highly prized by sailors.

Medieval women often sold these cauls to sailors for large sums of money; a caul was regarded as a valuable talisman.

In the Polish language, the idiom w czepku urodzony/a ('born in a bonnet') means a person who is always very lucky. The Russian phrase родился в рубашке ('born in a shirt') refers to caul birth and figuratively means "born lucky". It is often applied to someone who is oblivious to a pending disaster that is avoided only through luck as if the birth caul persists as supernatural armor, and in this sense commonly appears in titles or descriptions of Russian dashcam videos. (Wikipedia)