Stone Baby (Lithopedia)
Most people are fortunate to mark the end of a pregnancy with the cry of a baby but sometimes, a pregnancy might not end with a child being born, this can be the case of a stone baby. A stone baby is a rare phenomenon which occurs most commonly when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy,and its too large to be reabsorbed by the body, and it then calcifies(hardens like stone) on the outside as part of a foreign body reaction, shielding the mother’s body from the dead tissue of the fetus and preventing infection.
This is clinically known as lithopedia. Lithopedia may occur from 14 weeks gestation to full term. It is not unusual for a stone baby to remain undetected for decades and to be found well after natural menopause.
The women may experience a sensation of weight in the abdomen or pelvic pain. This is a rare condition and there have been few documented cases of it.
But hopefully, Stone babies will become even rarer in the future with advances in diagnosis and timely surgical intervention
