Giving Birth to a Mummy

Zahra Aboutalib, from Morocco, delivered a child she’d been carrying for almost half a century. This shocking yet fascinating story began in 1955 when Zahra went into labor. She was rushed to a hospital, but after watching a woman dying on the operation table during a Caesarean section, Zahra fled back in her small village outside Casablanca. After the pains were gone and the baby stopped kicking, Zahra considered him a “sleeping baby”. “Sleeping babies” are, according to Moroccan folk belief, babies that can live inside a woman’s womb to protect her honor. When Zahra was 75, the excruciating pains occurred again. Doctors performed an ultrasound test and discovered that her “sleeping child” was actually an ectopic pregnancy. What is even more amazing is how Zahra survived and how the dead fetus was accepted by the body just like another organ. Generally, this doesn’t happen. If not discovered in time, the growing fetus will eventually strain and burst the organ that contains it. Under these circumstances, the mother has few surviving chances. After nearly five hours, the surgeons successfully removed Zahra’s calcified fetus.

Stone babies, lithopedions, are an extremely rare medical phenomenon. According to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, only 290 cases of stone babies have been documented.

In 1933, Lina Medina was born in Ticrapo, Peru. At the age of five, Lina was brought to the hospital by her parents complaining of extreme abdominal growth. She was originally thought to have a tumor, but doctors later determined that the child was seven months pregnant. On May 14, 1939, Lina Medina gave birth to a baby boy. The child was delivered by way of caesarean section, as Lina’s pelvis was too small to perform a natural birth. Her son was named Gerardo, and weighed 2.7 kg (6.0 lb). Lina Medina officially became the youngest confirmed mother in medical history, aged five years, seven months and 21 days. The doctors who worked on Lina noted that she had an abnormal advancement in growth, with prominent breast development by the age of four. By age five, her body displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation. However, the doctors could not explain how the 5-year-old girl became pregnant?

As one would expect, sexual abuse was immediately considered and Lina’s father was arrested on suspicion of rape and incest. He was later released due to lack of evidence. Lina Medina has never revealed who the true father of her child is, or the circumstances surrounding her impregnation. Gerardo was raised to believe that Lina was his sister, but found out at the age of 10 that she was his mother. He led a normal life, but died in 1979, at the age of 40, after being diagnosed with a bone marrow disease. If this event had occurred in recent history, I can only imagine the mass publicity the story would have received. A heavy push would have been made to test the DNA of Gerardo and compare it to that of Lina’s father. Lina Medina is still alive today, but refuses to give any interviews. The case has been called a hoax by some, but doctors have verified the pregnancy was real, based on biopsies and x-rays of the fetal skeleton. There are two published photographs documenting the birth. The most famous picture was taken of Lina Medina when she was seven-months pregnant.