Thursday, May 23, 2013

Woman Pregnant For 46 Years Gives Birth To Mummy


In 1955 in a small village just outside Casablanca, 26 year old Zahra Aboutalib is pregnant with her first child. She was looking forward to giving birth, but after 48 hours of painful labour, she was rushed to the local hospital. Doctors informed her that she would need a caesarean section. On the ward Zahra saw a woman in terrible pain die in child-birth. She fled the hospital fearing she would meet the same fate if she remained.

In the days that followed, Zahra continued to suffer excruciating labour pains but the baby remained resolutely in her womb. After a few more days the pains ceased and the baby stopped moving.
In Moroccan culture, it is believed that a baby can sleep inside the mother to protect her honour. Zahra believed this myth and put the pregnancy out of her mind. She adopted three children and in due course they made her a grandmother.

Many years later when Zahra was 75 years old, the pains suddenly returned. Her son being concerned for his mother's well-being wanted her to see a specialist. For this they had to travel to Rabat where they saw Professor Taibi Ouazzani. He suspected the protruding belly was being caused by an ovarian tumour and arranged for her to have an ultra-sound scan. This revealed a large mass that he could not identify.

He referred Zahra to a specialist radiographer for a second opinion. He could see it was a calcified structure of some sort, but it took a detailed MRI scan to reveal that it was the baby Zahra had conceived 46 years earlier.

 Professor Ouazzania was faced with a difficult decision when deciding if it would be safe to try and remove the [calcified] foetus. The foetus weighed 7lb and measured 42cm in length.

 Read more HERE

9 comments:

Freakanzoy said...

Wow.
How can you just forget telling the doctor there's a baby in there that never was born?

David said...

That's not all. While looking for sources I googled "woman pregnant for," then the auto-complete suggested 15 years, 60 years, 2 years, and on and on!

Freakanzoy said...

Yep, apparently there are loads of mummified babies, some are half of twins that never got born.
The body is a strange, strange thing.

David said...

Now I have heard that left handed people have probably absorbed their twin in utero! Apparently it is quite common for a twin to be absorbed, and hence people born with extra "parts!" *shudders*

Joanne Casey said...

POTATO!

Unknown said...

This is absolutely horrible. How do you just "forget" about having your baby like that?? It's not a gallon of milk that you just "forgot" at the store. Did she even care to know whether or not it was okay?? smh I guess not.

David said...

With all the stories I've seen over the years of women giving birth not even knowing that they were pregnant, well, I think anything is possible.

Careless said...

hmm the thing is in poorer countries. women go through labour etc but they are not provided the opportunity to know about their bodies and baby's. i come from such background. in western world currently, there is a whole word of info available to pregger ladies and therefore the shock horror response. but i can see why she behaved in this manner. myths and stories and no solid information combine that with village background , its entirely possible she believed baby just went away or to sleep etc. poor woman cant have been easy carrying this all the time.

Unknown said...

information which is very nice, and hopefully we can be grateful for what the Lord in love, greetings from me Obat Bius