childbirth
File picture: The baby boy died at a hospital in Tartagal, northwest Argentina. Reuters

Doctors in Argentina accidentally decapitated a baby boy after he became stuck during child birth, it has been reported.

Mother, Reina Natalia Valazquez, has told of the horrifying incident that she claims occurred as medics struggled to deliver the premature child in Tartagal, in the northwest of the country.

Valazquez, who plans to file a claim of gross negligence said that the baby boy's head remained inside her and was later delivered naturally, along with the placenta.

The 30-year-old was 22 weeks' pregnant when she went into early labour whilst visiting family in Salvador Mazza on Monday (18 December).

She was taken by ambulance to the Juan Domingo Peron hospital, over 30 miles away, and doctors decided that Valazquez could give birth naturally.

Valazquez said in an interview with Argentina's El Grito Salta website that she had asked for a caesarean but was told there was not a doctor that could perform one at the hospital.

Valazquez claimed that a doctor was stretching the unborn baby and turning his body around in the moments before his tragic death.

She said according to The Sun: "I felt that. They were doing it very hard, it was very painful. I told the doctor she was hurting me, but she said, 'no, I'm not'.

"She asked me to shut up and open my legs and kept stretching the baby until they took the baby out, but I could only see the bottom part and they didn't show me the whole baby.

"I only got to see the legs, and they said, 'let's take her urgently to surgery'.

"So I asked, why are you taking me there? And they told me that the baby's head was inside of me."

Valazquez, from Buenos Aires, said her husband, Ignacio, had gone out to buy nappies for the baby only to return to find one of the medics holding his headless body.

Hospital director Jose Fernandez told the InformateSalta website that medics decided against a caesarean because Valazquez was already dilated to 11cm.

"The baby was still in a breech position, so the body came out first. When it got to the head, there was a spasm of the cervix which compressed the boy's neck," Fernandez said.

"The obstetrician called another doctor who tried to free with a manoeuvre, there was a tear and a detachment was produced, decapitating it and leaving the head inside."

Argentina's prosecution service has confirmed that there will be an investigation into the baby's death.