High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Coffin birth, known in academia by the more accurate term postmortem fetal extrusion, is the expulsion of a nonviable fetus through the vaginal opening of the decomposing body of a pregnant woman as a result of the increasing pressure of intraabdominal gases. This kind of postmortem delivery occurs very rarely during the decomposition of a body. The modern practice of embalming, whereby chemical preservatives and disinfectant solutions are pumped into a body to replace natural body fluids (and the bacteria that reside therein), have made the occurrence of "coffin birth" so rare that the topic is rarely mentioned in modern medical discourse.