October 3, 2001

12:51 PM

Stone Baby born in Zaire.The woman noted that she had been pregnant about three years ago and everything seemed to be going fine, but "the baby never came out."
posted by Hildegarde (33 comments total)

Oh my I'm thinking twice about having kids!
posted by h0ney at 1:02 PM on October 3, 2001

Whoa! A heads up on the "delivery" photos might have been nice. Folks, don't scroll down on that page if you don't like seeing surgery... or calcified babies.
posted by whatnotever at 1:03 PM on October 3, 2001

ditto on that. i don't think that this is appropriate as a home page post w/o a due warning.
posted by elsar at 1:04 PM on October 3, 2001

doesn't this sound similar to the dead soap people link that was posted a couple of days ago? i mean, it sounds like a case of that. or something similar. weird.
posted by moz at 1:05 PM on October 3, 2001

Silly me...I thought 'stone baby' kind of said it all. :)
posted by Hildegarde at 1:05 PM on October 3, 2001

Was this trip really necessary?
posted by crunchland at 1:09 PM on October 3, 2001

"Stone Baby," yes. "Born" however is questionable. Blech.
posted by Awol at 1:10 PM on October 3, 2001

Hildegarde, we would've gotten the point better if you'd said "calcified fetus."
posted by alumshubby at 1:12 PM on October 3, 2001

poor thing. looks like the ambilical cord became wrapped around its neck. the lady had kids before, so it wasn't like she didn't realize that the eventually came out. still am sorry i happened, though. i'm surprised the lady is ok. i would think that the mother would become very ill. i guess the fetus was precerved in the amniotic fluid.
posted by mich9139 at 1:13 PM on October 3, 2001

Yeah, it's at once horrific and kind of amazing...the way the human body can deal with things. I mean, who knew amnniotic fluid would calcify something? I'm surprised the woman was still okay too. I guess she didn't have any kids in the last three years...
posted by Hildegarde at 1:22 PM on October 3, 2001

Aw dood, I was eating my lunch....
posted by hellinskira at 1:23 PM on October 3, 2001

Well, from the link description I pretty much knew what the click would yeild, and all I can say is, "ick!"
posted by spilon at 1:28 PM on October 3, 2001

yuck... sick and wrong... I should have known better then following that link... ack.
posted by da5id at 1:31 PM on October 3, 2001

It's the most interesting link I've seen here in quite a while. You folks are presented with a heretofore unheard of medical anomaly, and all you can say is "eww"? Come on, kids...toughen up a bit in the name of knowledge. This stuff is incredible.
posted by Optamystic at 1:36 PM on October 3, 2001

Its a miracle that the baby "calcified". She's one lucky lady.
posted by tomplus2 at 1:39 PM on October 3, 2001

i rather enjoyed it, it's beautiful.
if you saw it without the blood and opened abdominal cavity you'd think it was a sculpture.
posted by elle at 1:41 PM on October 3, 2001

reminds me of a tool video...
posted by mich9139 at 1:43 PM on October 3, 2001

Grow up people! What is so startling or "gross" about this? This is one of the more best links I've seen here in a while. If you followed the link and were appalled, you have to ask yourself WHY you followed it in the first place. If the concept of a calcified baby didn't alarm you, why would seeing it alarm you? Heck, next time I follow a link that somebody trumps up as being terribly interesting and I find it completely boring I'm complaining.

No, wait, I don't have that kind of free time...
posted by RevGreg at 1:48 PM on October 3, 2001

some women have calcified fetuses in their abdomens for years. they end up thinking they're sterile when the entire time it was a calcified fetus acting as an IUD in her uterus. they get discovered because they have a hysteretomy or laproscopy or something.

i guess they're not usually this big...
posted by taumeson at 1:50 PM on October 3, 2001

At least she got a new doorstop out of it
posted by Snotty at 1:52 PM on October 3, 2001

Fascinating, but just a brief warning that graphic photos were involved would have been good. Much less graphic than some of the Soap Lady stuff, but still...

A couple of loose ends:

If you were pregnant and nothing ever happened (either a birth or a miscarriage), would you really wait THREE YEARS to find out what was going on?

I doubt that the amniotic fluid could have caused the calcification, but perhaps someone with a medical background could clue us in?
posted by briank at 1:52 PM on October 3, 2001

Stile eat your heart out....errr never mind
posted by Qambient at 2:05 PM on October 3, 2001

Revgreg and others: Personally, I was just shocked to see pictures of the surgery. I was expecting a calcified baby, not a woman's wide-open abdomen and other aspects of the surgery. I don't mind it, I was just shocked.

But yeah, this was a pretty cool link.
posted by whatnotever at 3:09 PM on October 3, 2001

briank, I'd imagine the woman, not in pain or otherwise showing illness, couldn't justify the cost of a check-up.
posted by Awol at 4:22 PM on October 3, 2001

I heard about something like this years ago, except the woman was much older, way beyond child-bearing. A web search turned up this article (scroll down to Friday, Nov 24).

***
After several years of suffering from mysterious stomachaches, a Colombian woman was found to be carrying a calcified fetus from a pregnancy four decades ago. Reuters reports that 72-year-old Otilia Castro evidently became pregnant when she was about 32, but the child developed outside the uterus, in her lower abdominal cavity, eventually growing to a length of 10 inches and a weight of 3.5 pounds. "I've been a radiologist for 14 years and I've never seen anything like this," said Guillermo Diaz, who X-rayed Castro for what was initially suspected to be a tumor but what was instead discovered to be the calcified fetus. Speaking to the local press from her hospital bed, Mama Castro said, "I felt like my stomach was big and it hurt me a lot, but I never thought it was that."
*****
posted by phichens at 5:39 PM on October 3, 2001

I've heard of another one, they only found that she had it, when she was shot by a family member. Guinness book of world records. Was pregnant for something like 32 years, but I don't think she ever knew she was pregnant.
posted by stoneegg21 at 5:58 PM on October 3, 2001

Nature is pretty amazing. I was surprised that the fetus didn't decay inside its host/mother and that the mother didn't become gravely ill. Viewing the photos was like looking at the aftermath of a bad car accident--the images were both disturbing and fascinating. An amazing link. [Elle: BTW, I agree with you. I thought the calcified fetus looked like either a Henry Moore or Brancusi sculpture when I first saw it.]
posted by mosspink at 6:04 PM on October 3, 2001

If you were pregnant and nothing ever happened (either a birth or a miscarriage), would you really wait THREE YEARS to find out what was going on?

The report said that her menstrual periods had resumed; she may well have thought that she'd miscarried. This is a village woman, she may have a limited understanding of medical things, knowing only that no periods = pregnant, periods = not pregnant, and presuming that having her period resume without a birth meant that no birth will happen. It was probably only the distended stomach and irregularity of her menses that brought her any concern at all.
posted by Dreama at 7:35 PM on October 3, 2001

After several years of suffering from mysterious stomachaches, a Colombian woman was found to be carrying a calcified fetus from a pregnancy four decades ago.

Ok I'm going to start being more consistent with my yearly physical.
posted by glenwood at 7:43 PM on October 3, 2001

Ghoulish question, but does this happen? These seem to be all extrauterine pregnancies. Is it inevitable that the fetus dies in these cases? What chemical in the abdomen causes them to be calcified?
posted by Charmian at 8:15 PM on October 3, 2001

This happened to my family's cat... about a month after she had her third litter we took her to the vet to get fixed and they found three or four fetuses. Apparently it was very good luck that we'd taken her in when we did, because they could have made her sick.

Don't rabbits reabsorb unborn litters if they're put under enough environmental stress? I remember reading something like that somewhere.
posted by halonine at 2:32 AM on October 4, 2001

I've heard of another one, they only found that she had it, when she was shot by a family member.

Yeah that would do it.

shot by a family member

What?

I'm sorry, it just looks so ... normal ... when you put it like that.
posted by Grangousier at 2:57 AM on October 4, 2001

The obvious response to this is:

"Rocco" if it's a boy, "Pearl" if it's a girl.

I'm also envisioning a new industry of "cultured fetus garden statuary".
posted by groundhog at 8:06 AM on October 4, 2001