A 22-year-old Chinese woman who raised the alarm about a newborn trapped in a sewer pipe kept quiet about being his mother, even as she watched the sensational two-hour rescue unfold.
The woman confessed to police a couple of days later when they asked her to undergo a medical checkup after searching her rented room, the state-run Zhejiang News website said on Wednesday.
Firefighters were called on Saturday to the residential building in the Pujiang area of the eastern Zhejiang province city of Jinhua to rescue a baby trapped in the L-joint of a sewage pipe just below a squat toilet in one of the building's public restrooms.
Video of the rescue was shown on Chinese news programs and websites and picked up worldwide, prompting both horror and an outpouring of charity on behalf of the newborn.
The single woman, a tenant in the building, told police she could not afford an abortion and secretly delivered the child on Saturday afternoon in the toilet. She said the newborn slipped into the sewer line and that she alerted her landlord of the trapped baby after she could not pull the child out, Zhejiang News said.
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In China, unwanted pregnancies have been on the rise because of lack of sex education and of an increasingly lax attitude toward sex.
Young men and women often are engaged in unprotected sex, and abortions have become increasingly are common.
The baby, who weighed 2.8kg had a low heart rate and some minor abrasions but was mostly unhurt.
Police initially said they were treating the case of as possible attempted homicide, but it was not immediately clear whether the mother would face any criminal charges.
The rescue prompted an outpouring from strangers who came to the hospital with nappies, baby clothes, powdered milk and offers to adopt him.
