Doctors have found a 44-year-old foetus inside the body of an 84-year-old Brazilian woman. But, surprisingly, this isn’t the first instance of a “stone baby” discovery. Above is a picture of a 40-year-old foetus, found in an 82-year-old Colombia woman last December.
Here are two reasons to never get pregnant. In the case of the Brazilian woman, she ended up in the hospital last Friday due to severe stomach pains and dizziness. Turns out she had a 20-week-old to 28-week-old foetus inside of her, even though the pregnancy was terminated more than four decades ago.
The phenomenon is called lithopedion, and in spite of these two reported cases in the past couple of months, there are only around 300 recorded instances ever. What happens is sometime between 14 weeks and full term, the foetus dies. It’s too big to be reabsorbed or miscarried, and for some reason it calcifies and protects the mother’s body from the dead tissue. This is almost exactly what happened to this elderly Brazilian woman after her foetus died. But it’s still in there, according to an ultrasound that showed a face and bones of the arms, legs, ribs and spine. And she has no plans to have the middle-aged foetus removed.