In a bizarre discovery for a woman in her seventies, doctors detected a "stone baby" in her belly after she complained of severe pain in her abdomen.

Doctors at a health facility in the eastern Algerian city of Skikd found the calcified fetus when the woman, whose identity was not revealed, was asked to get an X-ray scan, Meaww reported. The fetus weighed 4.5 lbs and was aged seven months.

This is a rare condition in which a calcified fetus, called a lithopedion, stays inside a woman’s body for decades without her realizing it. The fetus is created when a pregnancy forms in the abdomen rather than in the uterus and when the pregnancy fails, there is no way for the body to expel the fetus. As a result of this, the body calcifies the fetus, turning it into "stone."

The doctors believe the woman had been carrying the "stone baby" in her belly for close to 35 years. The woman had conceived the baby in 1981 but had suffered a miscarriage.

The septuagenarian had led a normal life, without feeling the presence of the fetus in her body. She had previously undergone medical treatment for another condition but the doctors didn’t discover the unborn, Upto Brain reported.

According to a case study in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, the word "lithopedion" has been derived from the Greek words "lithos," meaning stone, and "paidion," meaning child. The word is used to describe a fetus that has become stony or petrified. It is a rare complication that occurs when a fetus dies during pregnancy and becomes "too large to be reabsorbed by the body."

Dr. Kim Garcsi, from University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, told ABC News that calcification of the tissue protects the mother from infection and that the "stone" baby can remain in the abdomen undetected for several years.

"Most of the time people find these and [sometimes] even after they're found and don't do anything about it because they're totally asymptomatic," Dr. Garcsi had told the outlet.

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