Woman "Pregnant" for 60 years since 1948

STUNNED doctors discovered a woman complaining of stomach ache had been carrying her unborn child for 60 YEARS.

Huang Yijun, 92, of Huangjiaotan, southern China, was told by medics in 1948 that her child had died in the womb. Doctors demanded £100 to remove it, so she walked away. She said: "It was a huge sum at the time - more than the whole family earned in several years so I did nothing and ignored it.” But the secret emerged when Huang hurt her stomach and went to hospital for a scan.

Dr Liu Anbin at Qingshen hospital said: "I couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered she had a baby in her belly. “I’ve been a doctor for more than 40 years and it’s the first time I have seen something like this." Now medics are carrying out further tests to see if Huang needs an operation to remove the baby. Consultant Xu Xianming, director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department at the hospital, said: "Normally a dead foetus would decay. It’s very rare that Huang can be so healthy." - thesun

This beats the woman who carried a dead baby for 27 years:

Indonesian surgeons have delivered a 27-year-old baby from a middle-aged housewife who had carried the dead body inside her because she was too poor to have it removed, doctors said on Wednesday. A team of 15 doctors operated for three hours on Tuesday to retrieve the 1,6kg petrified baby from the 54-year-old woman, identified as Taminah, at the Sutomo general hospital in the Java island city of Surabaya.
"This may be a world record. The woman has carried the dead but fully developed baby inside her for 27 years," said Dr Urip Murtejo. He said the woman was otherwise healthy but had been referred to the hospital from her home of Bojenegoro, west of Surabaya, after complaining of occasional pains in her stomach. Taminah's baby perished before birth in 1978 after it developed outside the womb. At the time, she could not afford the surgery to extract it, Murtejo said. The woman was recovering at the hospital and was said to be in good health after the operation. The body was taken for forensic study. - mz.ca

Huang Yijun has also beat Zahra Aboutalib who carried a stone baby for 46 years:

... 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. ... - mymult

Here is an explanation of what happens:

In an ectopic pregnancy, if the dead foetus is too large to be re-absorbed by the mother's body it becomes a foreign body to the mother's immune system. To protect itself from possible infection the mother's body will encase the foetus in a calciferous substance as the tissues die and dehydrate. As the calciferous wall builds up, the foetus is gradually mummified becoming a lithopedion or stone baby.