NATIONAL NEWS
RARE PREGNANCY DISCOVERED IN 92
YEAR OLD CHILEAN WOMAN
By EMALYDIA FLENORY
A 92-YEAR-OLD CHILEAN GRANDMOTHER HAS RECENTLY DISCOVERED THAT SHE HAS BEEN PREGNANT
FOR THE PAST 50 YEARS OF HER LIFE.
CHILE — The discovery was made during a hip x-ray after the woman went into the hospital following a fall. To everyone’s
surprise, the x-ray showed that she was carrying a mummified fetus which had been seven months developed.
Although the fetus was seven months developed, the woman never sensed any pain during the pregnancy or in the past 50
years that she was carrying the fetus. However, this grandmother is not the first reported case of bearing a mummified child.
In 1582, an autopsy was performed on a 68-year-old woman in France. During the examination, Dr. Jean d’Ailleboust discovered
that this woman had been carrying a mummified child for 28 years. This condition was later named lithopaedion or stone-child.
According to Radiopaedia.org, lithopaedion occurs if a dead fetus is too large to be re-absorbed into the mother’s body and
because of this, becomes a foreign body to the mother’s immune system. To protect the body from any infection from this
foreign body, the mother’s body will coat the fetus in a calciferous substance. Overtime, this substance will cause the fetus to
become mummified—like stone.
Lithopaedion can occur anywhere from 14 weeks to full-term. One in 11,000 pregnancies can result in lithopaedion, and
because it is so rare, it is likely to go undiagnosed.
According to HuffingtonPost, Dr. Natalie Burger, an endocrinologist and fertility specialist in Texas, told NBC News that
lithopaedions start as ectopic pregnancies, which is a condition where the fertilized egg gets trapped on its way to the womb
and begins to develop outside of the uterus instead.
“Usually an ectopic pregnancy will mean a [fallopian] tubal pregnancy, but in a small percentage of cases, the pregnancy can
actually occur in the abdominal cavity — in places like the bowel, the ovary, or even on the aorta,” Burger said. “These are very
rare locations and they can be very dangerous.”