Stone baby.......and other ectopic pregnancies.....

I was watching a medical show tonight and a show came on about stone babies and ectopic pregnancies.

A Lithopedion (Greek:litho =stone; pedion = child), or stone baby, is a rare phenomenon which occurs most commonly when a fetus dies during an ectopic pregnancy, is too large to be reabsorbed by the body, and calcifies on the outside, shielding the mother's body from the dead tissue of the baby and preventing infection. Lithopedia may occur from 14 weeks' gestation to full term. It is not unusual for a stone baby to remain undiagnosed for decades, and it is often not until a patient is examined for other conditions or a proper examination is conducted that includes an x-ray that a stone baby is found. The oldest reported case is that of a 76-year-old woman, whose lithopedion had probably been present for 46 years.

Fewer than 300 cases have been noted in 400 years of medical literature.

NOW I had not really heard about STONE babies before this show....and I had heard about ectopic pregnancies but did NOT know that SOME......can actually BURST through the fallopian tube and SURVIVE! The ruptured tube and bleeding does not cause the mother's death and the fetus survives and travels down OUTSIDE of the uterus and attaches itself somewhere on the mother's internal organs.....creating a blood supply and living! (although I think they said this was like the only baby who has survived....or one of few?)

THIS story tonight was of a woman in London.....who was pregnant with TRIPLETS.....and ONE of them had been in her fallopian tube......but it ruptured and traveled outside her body and attached itself to her internal organs. It had created a placenta...etc. They gave the baby 60 million to ONE odds for survival. The placenta he had created was a threat to the mother and other 2 female fetuses in the mother's uterus. If it detached and began to bleed they would not be able to stop the bleeding and she could bleed to death...etc.

It was very touch and go......the babies were about 2 months from being full term...and they decided to operate and remove them. They removed the 2 girls from the uterus first.....and then had to FIND the third baby...and he had really sealed himself up tight to her internal organs but they did finally separate him from the mother's internal organs.....and he was not only formed and developed okay...ALL the triplets survived and are now SIX years old and completely developmentally and emotionally and mentally NORMAL! The placenta had to be left inside as they could not remove it for fear of Mom bleeding to death.....but the woman' s body did what it should and slowly the placenta shrunk inside her and she basically reabsorbed it and the threat to her life was gone.

I would say those children were meant to be here!

CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT????? This baby is a medical miracle......surviving his gestation WITHIN THE ABDOMINAL cavity but NOT the uterus!

While some of the graphic nature of the show was difficult to watch.....(they actually showed the surgical footage of removing that one stone baby).....I still found it all fascinating.

And what a miracle that little boy is and what story he will have to tell the rest of his life!