Today's Malady: Babies of Stone

Imagine being pregnant... and then never giving birth. It is not until years later that an x-ray reveals a calcified mass... that of your baby.

This phenomenon is known as lithopedion or "stone baby",
and in the case of this Zairian woman, the calcified fetus was fully recognizable as a fetus.

Cases of lithopedion frequently arise where there has been an ectopic pregnancy and the fetus has died.

The fetus is too large to be reabsorbed by the body, so the tissues are gradually replaced by calcium. The lithopedion is not discovered until other problems (related or unrelated) bring the woman in to see the doctor. A lithopedion can easily be mistaken for a tumor; in the case of the Zairian woman, the truth of the matter was discovered during surgery.

It occurs roughly once every 20,000 pregnancies, and is more common in developing nations where there is less rigorous prenatal monitoring.

Lithopedion was featured in an episode of Nip/Tuck.

The earliest stone baby is one reported to have been found in an archaeological excavation of a site dating to 1100 BCE, and women have been known to carry lithopedia for over 60 years.