In a medical anomaly, a teenage girl without a vaginal opening became pregnant via oral sex.
A 15-year-old from Lesotho, a landlocked country within South Africa, was admitted to a hospital with symptoms of abdominal pain. Routine testing revealed the patient was nine months pregnant.
More shocking than the surprise pregnancy was the revelation that the girl had no vaginal opening, a rare birth defect known as distal vaginal atresia.
The condition affects one in 10,000 to 15,000 newborn girls and is characterized by the failure of the vaginal plate to canalize.
As a result of her distal vaginal atresia, the patient delivered her healthy, 6.2-pound baby boy via C-section.
Medical experts were puzzled as to how someone without a vaginal opening could conceive a child without access to in-vitro fertilization.
The girl reported that in the months leading up to the birth, she noticed her body changing shape but because she does not have a vaginal opening and thus did not engage in penetrative vaginal sex, she “did not believe she was pregnant.”
In later interviews, the miraculous mother shared that she became aware she had no vagina after “disappointing attempts at conventional intercourse” that led her to prefer oral sex.
When questioned about how she may have become pregnant, the young mother revealed that nine months before her C-section delivery, she had suffered stab wounds to her abdomen shortly after performing oral sex on a partner.
At that time she confided in a nurse that her ex-boyfriend had violently attacked her when he found her in the act with her current partner.
The medical team that attended to the patient surmised that the sperm she swallowed was transmitted to her reproductive organs through her stab wounds, resulting in an indirect and unexpected conception.
What makes this pregnancy even more shocking is that typically, digestive acid in the stomach is strong enough to quickly kill sperm, rendering it unviable.
However, the medical team believes that the sperm miraculously survived because the girl was malnourished at the time of the attack, thereby reducing the acidity levels in her digestive system and allowing the ingested sperm to fertilize her uterus through her stab wounds.
The case, which dates back to 1988, was detailed in the British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.
The resurfaced news follows a recent report of a Scottish woman who thought she had a burst appendix only to find out she was pregnant — and gave birth 40 minutes later.
