Pregnancy is one of the most strangely beautiful mysteries of life. In slightly less than a year, a tiny new person is fashioned through a laborious, yet gratifying algorithm of biology. But what if pregnancy lasted longer, say several decades, and never even produced a viable offspring?
This was the reality for an 84-year old Brazilian woman who recently checked herself into the hospital complaining of severe abdominal pains. After several diagnostic tests, doctors discovered the impossible: She was pregnant.
The saga began 44 years ago when the woman was told she was expecting. Her pregnancy was plagued with excruciating stomach pains, and somewhere between 20 and 30 weeks into her gestation, she sought the help of a healer. After the visit, her pains vanished, and her stomach stopped growing. The woman assumed that the child had been aborted.
In actuality, the woman had unknowingly experienced an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when the fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus, often in the fallopian tubes. This condition can be life-threatening for the mother so it is a miracle, even, that this woman did not undergo further physical trauma.
In this specific case, the mother’s body was unable to resorb the fetus because of its large size. Instead, the maternal body covered the fetus with calcium deposits. This process was necessary for body’s protection against the dead fetal tissue and subsequent possible infections related to it. Such an occurrence, known as lithopedion, a word derived from the Ancient Greek phrase for “stone baby,” has only been documented in about 300 cases in the history of medicine.
Experts are incredulous that the woman did not suffer from any other signs or symptoms throughout the 44-year gap between her pregnancy and the discovery of the stone baby. However, at least one medical journal has stated that remaining asymptomatic for many years is not entirely unheard of and may even be normal in many cases.
In this particular occurrence, doctors were not able to visualize the fetus with an ultrasound. However, when they performed an X-ray, they were suddenly able to see the face, bones of the arms, legs, ribs and spine of the fetus.
Since discovering this bizarre medical truth, the woman has elected not to remove the fetus. Doctors have tried to convince her otherwise, in order to prevent later medical complications — but to no avail.
