Surgeons removed a calcified stone baby a woman had carried for three years

A 42-year-old woman in Somaliland lived for about three years with lower abdominal pain and a growing sense of heaviness before doctors found the cause: a fully calcified fetal mass, known as a lithopedion or stone baby. Surgeons removed it completely, and she recovered. The case was reported by Abdisamed Mohamoud H. Ali, Ahmed Osman Mohamed and Khadar Jama Ibrahim, and covered by Live Science on October 28, 2026, in a report by Anirban Mukhopadhyay edited by Nicoletta Lanese and Laura Mondragón.

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Only a few hundred such cases appear in the medical literature, which makes each new report a useful data point for clinicians.

The case report and the people behind it

The paper, Lithopedion Following Presumed Primary Abdominal Pregnancy in a 42-Year-Old Woman from Somaliland, appeared in the International Medical Case Reports Journal, DOI 10.2147/imcrj.s634443. It was received June 20, accepted August 21 and published September 5, 2026. Ali and Ibrahim are listed in the Emergency Department of Hargeisa Group Hospital in Hargeisa, and all three authors are affiliated with the School of Medicine and Surgery at Amoud University in Borama. The case text refers only to the authors’ hospital, so Hargeisa Group Hospital is the institution the paper’s affiliations point to. Neither the paper nor Live Science’s account names the operating surgeons; the acknowledgments thank unnamed surgical, anesthesia, radiology and nursing teams. The authors report written consent from the patient, with identifying details anonymized.

According to Live Science’s report, the woman recalled what seemed to be a pregnancy, with abdominal growth and fetal movements that then stopped, and she sought no medical care at the time. Over the next three years she developed chronic dull pain and heaviness that worsened in recent months. Examination found a hard, irregular mass reaching the navel that barely moved when touched. Blood tests showed mild anemia, other routine results were normal, and a pregnancy test was negative.

Ultrasound showed a calcified mass and an empty uterus. A CT scan with three-dimensional modeling placed the mass in the lower abdomen and pelvis and showed fetal skeletal structures within it, including a skull, spinal column, ribs and arm and leg bones. The paper gives preoperative CT dimensions of about 18 by 12 by 10 centimeters, while Live Science reports roughly 7 by 5 inches, or 18 by 13 centimeters.

The authors present the case as a diagnostic puzzle rather than a surprise on the operating table, because the imaging pointed to the answer before any incision. The combination of a long history of abdominal swelling, a negative pregnancy test, an empty uterus and a calcified mass containing recognizable skeletal outlines let the team reach the diagnosis of lithopedion beforehand and plan a complete removal.

The operation and recovery

The team performed an exploratory laparotomy under general anesthesia. They found a fully calcified mass enclosed in dense fibrous tissue and attached to the back wall of the pelvic lining, and they removed it whole without injuring neighboring organs. The paper did not record the weight or dimensions of the removed specimen. On the first day after surgery she had a mild fever and nausea that cleared with conservative care. At follow-up visits after one, three and six months she had no symptoms and no sign of recurrence, and Live Science notes the authors’ point that excellent outcomes are possible even in settings with limited resources.

Why a stone baby is so uncommon

A lithopedion starts as an ectopic pregnancy, one in which a fertilized egg grows outside the uterus. MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine, notes that this usually happens in a fallopian tube but can occur in the abdominal cavity, and that such pregnancies cannot end in a healthy birth. In a very small share of abdominal cases the fetus dies and the body walls it off with calcium. ScienceAlert’s explainer puts abdominal pregnancies at an estimated 0.6 to 4 percent of ectopic pregnancies and the share that become lithopedions at about 1.5 to 1.8 percent of those, citing a 2019 paper that found fewer than 300 documented cases over four centuries.

Counts differ by source. The case report says approximately 330 to 340 cases have been documented, and Live Science puts the figure at about 340 over 400 years, with the first on record in 1582. Live Science also notes this patient was unusually young compared with many recent cases, which often involve postmenopausal women; the ScienceAlert piece cites a 1949 review of 128 cases with an average age at discovery of 55. Its unnamed experts believe the condition is growing rarer as abdominal pregnancies are caught earlier.

One question the paper itself leaves open is the origin of the mass: its title calls the underlying pregnancy presumed, and the diagnosis rests on the imaging and the findings at surgery that the authors describe. The paper includes a literature review alongside the case, and a reader seeking the detailed comparison with earlier reports can find it in the full text through the DOI link above.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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