For one Brazilian woman, it’s been a pregnancy of a lifetime. Or should we say half her lifetime.
Doctors made an incredible discovery when the senior citizen was admitted to a hospital in Natividade because of dizziness and stomach pains, according to the Daily Mail. After an X-ray, doctors found a “stone baby” inside her, the remnants of a pregnancy from 44 years ago.
Doctors estimate the baby is between 20 and 28 weeks old.
How does such a thing happen?
After experiencing excruciating pains she went to a witch doctor as there were no proper doctors in her village at the time. She claims he prescribed her medication which almost immediately made her feel better. ‘Her stomach didn’t grow any more, the baby stopped moving and she thought it had been aborted,’ Porto Nacional hospital gynaecologist Gesneria Saraiva Kratka told G1, a Brazilian news agency.
The fetus remained inside her and doctors say the woman’s body adapted to its new pal tagging along.
“It was possible to see the face, the bones of the arms, of the legs, the ribs and the spine,” Kratka said.
Reports of these “stone babies,” or Lithopedions, surface every few years. They occur when a fetus dies during pregnancy and is too large for the body to reabsorb it. The outside of the fetus then becomes calcified over time, which protects the mother from the fetus’ dead tissue and any potential infection.
In December, a Colombian woman was found to have a 40-year-old fetus lurking in her womb.
Perhaps the most incredible “stone baby” case surfaced in 2009, when a 92-year-old Chinese woman was found to have a 60-year-old fetus inside her.
Via the Daily Mail
