Incredible picture shows 30-year-old ‘stone baby’ fetus found in womb of elderly woman who complained of stomach pain
INCREDIBLE pictures show the moment doctors found a so-called ‘stone baby’ inside the womb of an elderly woman. The rare condition sees a calcified fetus called a lithopedion carried around for decades without the woman realising it. The pictures show the results of an x-ray scan carried out by doctors on a 73-year-old woman in Algeria. The woman carried the fetus, weighing 4.5 lbs and aged seven months, for 35 years. But she enjoyed a good quality of life and was not harmed by the fetus The old woman has previously undergone medical treatment yet the doctors didn’t discover the unborn. A lithopedion is created when a pregnancy forms in the abdomen rather than in the uterus. When the pregnancy ultimately fails, usually because the fetus does not have enough blood supply, there is no way for the body to expel the fetus. As a result the body calcifies the fetus turning it to ‘stone’ using the same immune process that protects from any foreign objec...