He has no name, just a number: Baby 59. But his face is now familiar to millions and wellwishers across China are anxiously monitoring the fate of the tiny newborn after firefighters freed him from a sewage pipe where he was trapped beneath a toilet.

Weighing just 5lbs, the boy was found wedged in the pipe beneath a shared bathroom in a residential building in Jinhua, in China's eastern province of Zhejiang. His placenta was still attached.

Early reports suggested residents heard his cries late on Saturday and raised the alarm – but updates suggested his unmarried mother had been the first to call for help, pretending she had merely come across him.

The extraordinary footage of his rescue showed firefighters sawing away an L-shaped section of the narrow pipe from the floor beneath the bathroom after attempts to pull him out failed. Medics at Pujiang People's hospital helped them to take it apart piece by piece with pliers and saws – a process that took almost an hour. It reportedly had a diameter of just 10cm.

State media said the baby, identified only by the number of his hospital incubator, had a low heart rate when he was admitted and had suffered cuts and bruising, but was now in stable condition.

Look at the size of that pipe they're holding. That's what he was in.