“It had been an extremely hard year for 91-year-old Estella Melendez. Her husband had passed away, and her health was on a quick decline. After suffering from a fall, Estella had to be taken far from her village to the nearest hospital, only to discover something that would rattle her, the doctors, and the world. As it turned out, she was pregnant.
Hello wonderful people, I’m Scott Leffler for WonderBot, and here is ’91-Year-Old Woman’s Visit to the Doctor Reveals She’s Been Pregnant for 60 Years.
91-year-old Estella Melendez and her husband, Manuel Gonzalez, were living a life that many would describe as blessed. Living in the tiny Pacific coastal community of La Boca, Chile, several hours outside of the capital Santiago, they shared an inseparable bond that had carried them through an astonishing 74 years of marriage. While the two weren’t exactly living it up in a mansion, the humble life they lived always managed to provide. Manuel’s work as a boater and fisherman ensured that the couple would always have food on the table.
However, in January of 2015, Estella’s life would see some major changes on the horizon, setting off a chain of events that would result in an unbelievable revelation. 2015 would prove to be a very rough start for Estella. Her 74-year marriage would at last be broken as she’d one day wake up to find that Manuel had quietly passed on at the age of 91.
Being only a year younger, Estella would struggle with the daily realities of being home alone, managing the house alone, and cooking for one after having spent three quarters of a century building a life with her soul mate. The loss must have been incalculable. They lived through far too many experiences to quantify them all, and that included some memories better left forgotten. The two both held one giant regret. Estella and Manuel always felt remorseful about not being able to have a family. It was something that they both longed for, but carry on they found out that Estella was unable to conceive and get pregnant.
When interviewed and asked to look back on her long life having gone by without a family to raise, Estella simply remarked, ‘We suffered tremendously for this reason.’ The reason behind Estella not being able to have a baby was a mystery for decades. However, she would find out only a few years before her husband passed that she had a long-standing tumor in her uterus. This could have been the reason all along. But she’d soon discover that the tumor would be the least of her issues.
By the year following Manuel’s passing, the widowed Estella would find herself unfortunately facing a slew of medical issues. She would find that her hearing began to go rapidly, and her mobility quickly dwindled. On top of this, she developed a severe case of arthritis, and things only continued to get worse after her 91st birthday. While her body was already slowing down significantly, things would change when Estella would trip and fall while tending to her home. While the fall didn’t cause any permanent damage, it was an eye-opener for the elderly woman, and she knew that she’d have to make some changes in her life.
It had become obvious to Estella that her body was giving way, as performing basic tasks alone began to require a lot of effort. She contacted her friend and pleaded for a ride to the Claudio Vacuna Hospital in San Antonio. It was no simple four blocks away to see her doctor but would require finding someone who could take her on a journey of 40 miles. Concerned over the fall, the doctors wanted to put Estella through a full-body x-ray. At her age, the doctor knew she really couldn’t afford to take any heavy damage. It was during the x-ray process that they would discover something that would leave them deeply startled.
To begin with, the doctors that examined Estella thought that they were merely looking at something they’d already seen – a second tumor. Tumors were nothing new to her as she had a bout with cancer back in the 1980s. However, wanting to be sure of their findings, the doctor decided to perform a second x-ray. That’s when they found out that they’d been very wrong about Estella’s condition. After carefully analyzing their find, they came to the conclusion that Estella had never had a tumor in the first place. What she was carrying inside of her was something far more serious than a mere tumor. Estella was technically pregnant. She’d been carrying the remains of a long-deceased fetus. However, the biggest shock came when they learned how long it had been inside of her.
After studying the fetus, doctors were able to conclude that she had been pregnant with it for roughly 60 years. The news had to have come as devastating to Estella. All her life, she and Manuel wanted nothing more than a child to raise. Seemingly deprived of this ability, while all the while her unborn child was unknowingly inside of her for more than half a century.
The reality of her situation shocked Estella, her doctors, and many locals in their corner of Chile. Not many people had ever heard of such a terrifying condition. And yet, as it turns out, Estella’s condition wasn’t as mysterious as many people might have thought. Estella’s condition is called lithopedian, and it affects a small percentage of women across the world.
The names of these fetuses themselves are lithopedians, or ‘stone babies.’ These unique specimens are the result of a fetus that begins to develop outside of a pregnant woman’s womb. These kinds of fetuses are extremely risky for both mother and child, and if not handled quickly, the condition can result in the demise of both. However, if the fetus is small and undeveloped, it can be gradually absorbed into the pregnant mother’s body. And yet, this wasn’t the case with Estella.
What doctors saw in this elderly woman was something that had been scarcely seen in modern history. If the fetus is too developed, it won’t be absorbed by the mother; rather, it calcifies in the uterus. Usually, people with a stone baby will just go into surgery and get it removed. Sadly, the doctors determined that this wouldn’t be a possible route for 91-year-old Estella. Surgery wasn’t something she was likely to survive.
While the news was encouraging, ultimately Estella said she didn’t mind as it did remind her of her late husband. While the news of the stone baby was all around, another layer of tragedy added on to an already rough time in her life. Not everything the doctor told her lingered in bad light. On one hand, Estella and her husband’s biggest dream was under their noses all along, and they never had the chance to recognize it together.
While that alone is very tragic, Estella dethroned a belief that had often made her feel awful throughout the majority of her life. She lived her whole life feeling like she was a bit less than everyone else. Estella had to see her sisters and friends have children while she remained childless in a time and place where rearing children was the norm. It was an incredible revelation, and she couldn’t just come home from the hospital and adjust back to her quiet life. Discovering someone who had been carrying a child for over half a century wasn’t something that everyone surrounding Estella was going to graze over and ignore.
As news spread to an international level, people around the world were intrigued by this elderly woman and wanted to know more about her story. Estella soon found herself at the center of a media explosion. The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CNN all rushed over to Chile to get the elderly woman’s story. While most would expect to see the elderly woman burst into tears in the face of such pressure, her response was actually something that caught the watching masses completely off guard.
When the world was introduced to Estella Melendez, they might have assumed that they’d be looking at someone who had been broken by the ravages of time and her odd discovery. After all, nobody can expect anyone who lost their husband of 74 years and discovered a 60-year-old fetus inside of them to be in the best state of mind. However, Estella sat before the cameras poised and calm. She clutched her cane and looked at the interviewer with very attentive eyes and spoke with elegance. Despite living through a series of tragic events, the woman appeared tough as nails, and it garnered her a very unexpected response.
Estella had experienced hardships that most of us will never know. Just hearing about it left people baffled and saddened. A woman named Julie summed up public opinion with her comment, ‘That’s so sad. It might have actually given her husband a little joy had they found out earlier.’ However, the young lady’s comment didn’t end on that sad note. She further stated, ‘I guess one way of looking at it is that they did have a child, and she carried it around with her for 60-plus years. And now, since they won’t remove it, she still has a part of him with her, in an unusual sort of way.’
While many were baffled, others found the story strangely relatable. A woman named Lauren Pearl wrote in a comment on the story and described how her sister also had been pregnant with a stone baby in her, albeit not her own one. According to doctors, Lauren explained, ‘This happened to my sister. She had no idea until she was pregnant with my niece. It was her own twin. As crazy as it sounds, it isn’t super uncommon. Most people just never know.’
With that said, many are wondering what’s going on with Estella today. In her 90-plus years of life, there’s no way that Estella could have imagined that she’d be at the center of a media outburst as she was. Well, most people get their 15 minutes of fame much earlier on in life, if they get it at all. Estella Melendez had her moment in the sun, though it was due to a strange medical condition and came in the wake of a tragedy.
