Newborn baby boy is rescued ALIVE from drain under courtyard after 40 hours

• Baby may have been there for 40 hours only found after neighbour called firefighters because they thought a meowing cat was stuck                                                                                     
  
  Safe now: The baby in the arms of a rescue worker. The two-day-old, who still had his umbilical cord attached, was rescued from a drain in Spain after a 40-hour ordeal
  A mother has been arrested for trying to kill her newborn by pushing him down a drain.
  The two-day-old boy still had his umbilical cord when he was rescued from a shaft in a block of flats near Alicante.
  The horrific discovery came after a neighbour took his crying for a cat meowing and phoned police to say an animal was trapped.
  The baby, weighing 4lb 8oz, was wrapped inside a plastic bag that had a hole in it to let him breathe.
  Spanish police say they believe the child may have been abandoned at birth, spending nearly 40 hours in the drain before he was rescued. He was taken to hospital with injuries including a broken arm.
   
• • She has been arrested and has told officers she could not afford an abortion
  
   
  A woman, 26, is led away after she was arrested for trying to kill the newborn by pushing him down a drain 
  
  
   
  His condition last night  was described as serious but not life-threatening. His mother, who is 26, was arrested in  the hospital to which she had been admitted on Friday after telling doctors she had had  a miscarriage.
  She was escorted back to the flat yesterday afternoon by police for a scene-of-crime inspection. She has reportedly confessed to officers, saying she did not have enough money for an abortion.
  
  

  One neighbour said: ‘I thought it was a cat that was trapped and the baby’s crying was the meowing. The noise went on for ages so I called the police.

  ‘One of the firefighters saw one of his tiny feet and realised it wasn’t a cat but a child.’

  Police were called at around 2am yesterday morning to the flat in the working-class Alicante neighbourhood of Virgen del Carmen.

  The mother and her baby, who is being looked after in the city’s general hospital post-natal intensive care unit, have not been named.

  Social services say they will investigate the newborn’s  family set-up before making  any decision on his future.  A spokesman for Spain’s national police said: ‘The woman we have arrested is being held on suspicion of attempted murder.’

  
  

  Rescue: Last month this baby was cut out of a toilet pipe in east China's Zhejiang province after his mother tried to give birth in secret

  

  
  

  Fight for survival: The newborn baby was rescued by firefighters after being flushed down a toilet

  The case mirrors that of the Chinese baby rescued from a sewage pipe last month.

  The child, freed after a two-hour operation captured on camera, was named Baby 59 after its incubator in the hospital in the eastern province of Zhijiang.

  The 22-year-old mother told police the baby had accidentally slipped into the lavatory after she secretly gave birth in a public toilet.

  The mother said she had  managed to hide her pregnancy by wearing loose clothes  and tightly wrapping her abdomen.

  There are regular reports in China of babies being abandoned after birth, a problem often attributed to young mothers not knowing they are pregnant.