In a medical anomaly, a teenager without a vaginal opening became pregnant after giving oral sex.
The anonymous 15-year-old from Lesotho, a country in southern Africa, went to the hospital complaining of severe abdominal pain, only for tests to reveal she was nine months pregnant, according to The Sun, and her intermittent cramps were actually contractions.
In a report published in the British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, doctors found that the teenager had a rare condition known as vaginal agenesis, which occurs in about one in 4000-10,000 newborn girls.
In theory, this should have prevented the teenager from becoming pregnant without techniques such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
How teen became pregnant
The condition also meant it was impossible for her to give birth vaginally.
This meant that doctors had to perform a C-section to deliver the baby, who turned out to be a healthy 2.8kg boy.
Doctors treating the girl in Lesotho were puzzled as to how the teenager had become pregnant.
The girl said she had noticed some changes in her body’s shape in the months before giving birth.
However, since she didn’t have a vaginal opening and had not had penetrative vaginal sex, she “did not believe she was pregnant”.
The bizarre incident nine months earlier
The doctors discovered that nine months earlier, she had gone to the hospital for a stab wound to her stomach area after giving oral sex.
At that time, she confided in a nurse about how her ex-boyfriend had violently attacked her during what she described as a “mini war” when he caught her engaging in the sex act with a new partner.
The experts determined that the sperm she swallowed somehow travelled to her reproductive organs through her stab wounds, resulting in the unexpected pregnancy.
“The fact that the son resembled the father excluded it as an even more miraculous conception,” they said.
The most plausible explanation
What adds to the mystery is that stomach acid typically has enough strength to kill sperm, preventing it from fertilising an egg.
So, the doctors’ most “plausible” explanation is that the sperm survived because the girl was malnourished at the time of the attack, and had no food in her stomach.
They believe this reduced the acidity in her stomach, meaning the sperm could navigate through her stab wounds and reach her uterus, where it fertilised the egg.
Subsequent interviews with the girl revealed that she realised she didn’t have a vagina after “disappointing attempts” with conventional intercourse, and as a result, engaged in oral sex.
