第29章
Finally, on the morning of November 6th, after a pregnancy of four hundred and seventy-six days, she was delivered of a male child weighing 13 pounds. Both the mother and child did well despite the use of chloroform and forceps. The other case was one lasting sixteen months and twenty days.
In a rather loose argument, Carey reckons a case of three hundred and fifty days. Menzie gives an instance in a woman aged twenty-eight, the mother of one child, in whom a gestation was prolonged to the seventeenth month. The pregnancy was complicated by carcinoma of the uterus. Ballard describes the case of a girl of sixteen years and six months, whose pregnancy, the result of a single intercourse, lasted three hundred and sixty days. Her labor was short and easy for a primipara, and the child was of the average size. Mackenzie cites the instance of a woman aged thirty-two, a primipara, who had been married ten years and who always had been regular in menstruation. The menses ceased on April 28, 1888, and she felt the child for the first time in September. She had false pains in January, 1889, and labor did not begin until March 8th, lasting sixty-six hours. If all these statements are correct, the probable duration of this pregnancy was eleven months and ten days.
Lundie relates an example of protracted gestation of eleven months, in which an anencephalous fetus was born; and Martin of Birmingham describes a similar case of ten and a half months'
duration. Raux-Tripier has seen protraction to the thirteenth month. Enguin reports an observation of an accouchement of twins after a pregnancy that had been prolonged for eleven months.
Resnikoff mentions a pregnancy of eleven months' duration in an anemic secundipara. The case had been under his observation from the beginning of pregnancy; the patient would not submit to artificial termination at term, which he advised. After a painful labor of twenty-four hours a macerated and decomposed child was born, together with a closely-adherent placenta. Tarnier reports an instance of partus serotinus in which the product of conception was carried in the uterus forty days after term. The fetus was macerated but not putrid, and the placenta had undergone fatty degeneration. At a recent meeting of the Chicago Gynecological Society, Dr. F. A. Stahl reported the case of a German-Bohemian woman in which the fifth pregnancy terminated three hundred and two days after the last menstruation. Twenty days before there had occurred pains similar to those of labor, but they gradually ceased. The sacral promontory was exaggerated, and the anteroposterior pelvic diameter of the inlet in consequence diminished. The fetus was large and occupied the first position. Version was with difficulty effected and the passage of the after-coming head through the superior strait required expression and traction, during which the child died.
The mother suffered a deep laceration of the perineum involving an inch of the wall of the rectum.
Among others reporting instances of protracted pregnancy are Collins, eleven months; Desbrest, eighteen months; Henderson, fifteen months; Jefferies, three hundred and fifty-eight days, and De la Vergne gives the history of a woman who carried an infant in her womb for twenty-nine months; this case may possibly belong under the head of fetus long retained in the uterus.
Unconscious Pregnancy.--There are numerous instances of women who have had experience in pregnancy unconsciously going almost to the moment of delivery, yet experiencing none of the usual accompanying symptoms of this condition. Crowell speaks of a woman of good social position who had been married seven years, and who had made extensive preparations for a long journey, when she was seized with a "bilious colic," and, to her dismay and surprise, a child was born before the arrival of the doctor summoned on account of her sudden colic and her inability to retain her water. A peculiar feature of this case was the fact that mental disturbance set in immediately afterward, and the mother became morbid and had to be removed to an asylum, but recovered in a few months. Tanner saw a woman of forty-two who had been suffering with abdominal pains. She had been married three years and had never been pregnant. Her catamenia were very scant, but this was attributed to her change of life. She had conceived, had gone to the full term of gestation, and was in labor ten hours without any suspicion of pregnancy. She was successfully delivered of a girl, which occasioned much rejoicing in the household.
Tasker of Kendall's Mills, Me., reports the case of a young married woman calling him for bilious colic. He found the stomach slightly distended and questioned her about the possibility of pregnancy. Both she and her husband informed him that such could not be the case, as her courses had been regular and her waist not enlarged, as she had worn a certain corset all the time.
There were no signs of quickening, no change in the breasts, and, in fact, none of the usual signs of pregnancy present. He gave her an opiate, and to her surprise, in about six hours she was the mother of a boy weighing five pounds. Both the mother and child made a good recovery. Duke cites the instance of a woman who supposed that she was not pregnant up to the night of her miscarriage. She had menstruated and was suckling a child sixteen months old. During the night she was attacked with pains resembling those of labor and a fetus slipped into the vagina without any hemorrhage; the placenta came away directly afterward. In this peculiar case the woman was menstruating regularly, suckling a child, and at the same time was unconsciously pregnant.