41-Week Pregnant Woman had a C-Section only to discover her stomach was empty all along....,,

Doctors performed an emergency C-section on a 'heavily pregnant' woman - only to find that her womb was empty, it was reported today.

The 37-year-old woman had been accompanied by midwives from Cabo Frio, southeast Brazil, since the beginning of her pregnancy.

She reportedly arrived at the town's women's hospital with a large belly and proof of her pre-natal treatment, which showed she was 41 weeks' pregnant.

Doctors performed a caesarean section on a 'heavily pregnant woman whose womb was empty.

When doctors were unable to detect the baby's heartbeat, they rushed her to into the operating room for a caesarean, according to the hospital's director, Rosalice Almeida.

She told Brazil's Globo G1 website: ‘She'd done her whole pre-natal and was already overdue.

‘Because the doctors couldn't pick up the heartbeat, they decided there wasn't time to request an ultrasound.

‘They did the surgery then had the great shock of not finding any baby at all.’

The case was registered as a phantom, or false pregnancy.