The operator was about to perform Cesarean section when he heard the noise of the membranes rupturing.

Thornton reports the extraction of a living child by version after the death of the mother.

Aveling has compiled extensive statistics on all varieties of postmortem deliveries, collecting 44 cases of spontaneous expulsion of the fetus after death of the mother.
Aveling states that in 1820 the Council of Cologne sanctioned the placing of a gag in the mouth of a dead pregnant woman, thereby hoping to prevent suffocation of the infant, and there are numerous such laws on record, although most of them pertain to the performance of Cesarean section immediately after death.
Reiss records the death of a woman who was hastily buried while her husband was away, and on his return he ordered exhumation of her body, and on opening the coffin a child's cry was heard.

The infant had evidently been born postmortem.

It lived long afterward under the name of "Fils de la terre." Willoughby mentions the curious instance in which rumbling was heard from the coffin of a woman during her hasty burial.