Doctors discover four-month-old ‘stone baby’ inside woman after she thought she aborted it 15 years ago (graphic photos)

                            

A woman was shocked to find out she was still carrying the baby she thought she aborted 15 years ago.

The 52-year-old woman, from Nagpur, northern India, had aborted her pregnancy because her family were said to not be in favour of another child. Unknown to her, the baby had remained in her abdomen and it had turned into a calcified foetus.

She had only become aware of the "stone baby" when she decided to seek medical attention for her abdominal pain and persistent nausea. The woman became extremely concerned when she stopped menstruating five years ago, so she met with a specialist at Junankar Surgical Nursing Home.

Dr Nilesh Junankar said: "Her CAT scan showed intestinal obstruction, a blockage in her food pipe along with a stone like structure. Due to this unusual report, a laparoscopy was done and to our utter surprise, there was a four-month old baby in the abdomen. We were very shocked. It’s extremely rare."

In a two hour operation, doctors managed to successfully remove the fully grown "stone baby" on November 23. A stone baby, or Lithopedion as it is called in medical terms, is extremely rare. Only 300 such cases have been reported in the past 400 years worldwide.

Dr Junankar added: "The chance of abdominal pregnancy is one in 11,000 pregnancies and only between 1.5 to 1.8% of abdominal pregnancies develop into Lithopedia.

"We have removed the stone baby from woman’s body and her four feet intestines have also been removed."

The woman thanked the hospital for freeing her from a decade of pain and has since been discharged from the hospital.