A tiny movement coming from a discarded plastic Fakta bag lying partially hidden beneath a bush yesterday on Dybedalsvej in Farum caught the eye of a man walking by. When he took a closer look, he found a second plastic bag stuffed inside the first. Inside the two bags was a newborn baby girl wrapped in a dirty blue towel.

The man immediately called 112.

The baby was described as fair-skinned and as slightly smaller than normal. Doctors who examined her suspected that the baby was not born in a hospital based on the unprofessional way her umbilical cord had been cut. They estimated that she was born sometime between 4am – 8am Thursday morning. Shortly after her birth, the child was placed in the bags and left under the bush. The man found her at around 10am Thursday morning.

The baby was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where doctors say she is doing well, considering the horrifying circumstances of her first few hours of life.

North Zealand police are asking that anyone who may have seen anything unusual happening on Dybedalsvej early Thursday morning to contact them at 114, while authorities in Furesø Council are preparing to find a local foster family to care for the child.

"The police and the hospital are trying to find the child’s mother," Mikkel Damgaard, the head of the child welfare section of Furesø Council, told Jyllands-Posten newspaper. “Once she is stable, the case becomes ours, and we need to find a family to take care of the child if the mother cannot be found.”

Furesø’s mayor, Ole Bondo Christensen, said that the baby needs to be placed with a family sooner rather than later.

“It needs to be done quickly to create that contact between the newborn and a family who gives a child the reassurance that it needs,” Christensen told Jyllands-Posten.

This is the second case of a new born being abandoned this year. In late January, a passerby spotted an infant in a sports bag in Rektorparken in Copenhagen. She was one week old. An intensive investigation failed to turn up any clues as to the identity of the child’s mother.

Factfile | Previous Cases

The baby found yesterday was the eleventh such incident in the last ten years.

January 2013: A one-week-old baby is left in a sports bag in Copenhagen. The baby was taken in by a foster family.

2011: A woman finds a newborn baby in a plastic bag in Maribo in south Zealand. The little boy survives.

2011: A newborn baby is found dead in Søndersø Lake near Viborg in Jutland.

2009: Some boys find a newborn baby in some bushes by Hee School in Ringkøbing in west Jutland. The baby survives.

2008: The dead body of a newborn child is found in a plastic bag in a forest near Horsens in Jutland.

2007: The lower part of a newborn’s body is found in a gravel pit in Storvorde, just south of Aalborg, Jutland.

2007: The body of a newborn baby is found in a plastic bag in a stream in Odense, Funen.

2006: Newborn boy found abandoned in a summer house residence area in Liseleje in northern Zealand. The baby survives. 

2004: A two-three day old baby is found alive and well in a bush in Odense.

2004: A newborn baby is found dead behind a hedge in Vanløse, Copenhagen.