Sunteți pe pagina 1din 5

02/03/2019 Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl - ABC News

Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl
Account of a girl impregnated after oral sex shows sperms' survival skills.

By LAUREN COX
Feb. 3, 2010— — Feb 2, 2010 10:55 PM ET

A strange tale of oral sex, a knife fight and the most unlikely of pregnancies recently
brought to light by the blogosphere has doctors touting the triumphant persistence
persistence
persistenceof
of
of
sperm
sperm
sperm.
sperm

In 1988, a 15-year-old girl living in the small southern African nation of Lesotho came to
local doctors with all the symptoms of a woman in labor. But the doctors were quickly
puzzled because, upon examination, she didn't have a vagina.

"Inspection of the vulva showed no vagina, only a shallow skin dimple," so doctors
delivered a healthy baby boy via Caesarean, the authors wrote in a case report published
in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Her birth defect -- called Mullerian agenesis or Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser


syndrome -- didn't necessarily surprise doctors, but her pregnancy did. Even the 15-year-
old girl could
could
couldnot
not
notbelieve
believe
believeshe
she
shewas
was
waspregnant
pregnant
pregnant.
pregnant

Yet by looking at her records the hospital staff realized the young woman was in the
hospital 278 days earlier with a knife wound to her stomach. The average pregnancy lasts
280 days. After interviews, they gathered that "Just before she was stabbed in the
abdomen she had practiced fellatio with her new boyfriend and was caught in the act by
her former
former
formerlover
lover
lover.
lover The fight with knives ensued."

The girl arrived at the hospital with an empty stomach -- and therefore with little stomach
acid around -- and doctors found two holes from a stab wound that opened her stomach up
to her abdominal
abdominal
abdominalcavity
cavity
cavity.
cavity The case report said doctors washed her stomach out with a salt
solution and stitched her up.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-girl-vagina-pregnant-sperm-survival-oral-sex/story?id=9732562&fbclid=IwAR3KeqhvgVikUguZSA0KEV… 1/5
02/03/2019 Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl - ABC News

"A plausible explanation for this pregnancy is that spermatozoa gained access to
the reproductive
reproductive
reproductiveorgans
organs
organs via the injured gastrointestinal tract," the authors wrote.

Infertility
Infertility experts
Infertilityexperts Discovery
experts note the story, which resurfaced on a Discovery magazine
Discoverymagazine blog
magazineblog
blog,
blog is not
only a testament to Murphy's Law but one to arguably nature's most impressive
swimmers: sperm.

How Could Sperm Survive Those Conditions?

"Here's an unbelievable set of coincidences," said Dr. Richard Paulson, head of the
University of Southern California Fertility Program in Los Angeles. "But it's totally
plausible."

Although doctors know that sperm needs a low acid (high pH) environment to survive,
and would likely die eventually in the low pH of stomach acid, doctors also said that
sperm comes in a protective fluid: ejaculate, a nourishing medium meant to protect the
sperm.

Besides, "out of hundreds of millions of sperm if you knock out 90 percent of them,
you're still going to have tens of millions of sperm," said Dr. Peter Schlegel, chairman of
urology at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.

Paulson agreed.

"Sperm are pretty hardy," said Paulson, who pointed out that sperm must make it out of
the acidic environment of the vagina before reaching more friendly territory at the cervix
and in the uterus. Once in the abdominal wall, Paulson estimated that the sperm could
survive for days.

"It's a long way from the stomach into the lower abdomen, it's a heck of a trip, but they
made it," said Paulson. "You just need sperm somewhere in the area of an egg."

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-girl-vagina-pregnant-sperm-survival-oral-sex/story?id=9732562&fbclid=IwAR3KeqhvgVikUguZSA0KEV… 2/5
02/03/2019 Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl - ABC News

Paulson said in the early days of fertility treatments in the 1980s, doctors injected sperm
in the lower abdomen hoping for the coincidental encounter with an egg. The procedure,
called DIPI or direct intraperitoneal insemination, has largely been replaced by more
effective methods.

The Lengths Sperm Can Travel

Schlegel pointed out that although fertilization typically takes place in the fallopian tubes,
doctors know that sperm can normally swim up and out of the reproductive organs into
the abdominal cavity.

"The sperm are naturally there at times, and eggs are naturally there," said Schlegel.
"Eggs are released from the ovary, and they sort of dance around before they get taken up
by the fallopian tube."

Sperm Can Swim Far in the Female Body

So it seems, Schlegel concluded, that the sperm could also be taken up by the fallopian
tube, as could a fertilized egg.

But some doctors are still suspicious of, or at least bewildered by the tale. The girl's birth
defect is well known and by age 15, doctors say most girls would have been doubling
over in pain with an abdomen filled with menstrual fluid that cannot escape.

The menstrual fluid of several periods would make it even more unlikely for a pregnancy
to occur.

"She'd have pain all the time and would have a stomach full of blood all the time, and
would have to be operated on, or she would eventually die," said Dr. Sherman J. Silber,
director of the infertility center of Saint Louis at St. Luke's Hospital in Missouri.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-girl-vagina-pregnant-sperm-survival-oral-sex/story?id=9732562&fbclid=IwAR3KeqhvgVikUguZSA0KEV… 3/5
02/03/2019 Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl - ABC News

Dr. Howard A. Zacur, a reproductive endocrinologist at Johns Hopkins, also had doubts.
"The case report here suffers from the fact that an individual with a completely obstructed
vaginal outlet would have been expected to have blood accumulation in the vagina, and/or
uterus," he wrote in an e-mail.

The authors of the report guessed a pregnancy could only be possible if the girl had
ovulated once or at most twice before her pregnancy.

Whatever the true story of the woman, and her now grown son, Silber said it could send a
message to ordinary couples planning pregnancy.

Why Doubt the Longevity of Sperm?

"This story is a crazy story, and there's no way to make sense of it," said Silber. "But the
data on sperm is that normally it's quite good in an alkaline environment for two or three
days -- that's why the average couple wastes a lot of energy when they're trying to get
pregnant."

Silber said he sees many couples who buy into the idea that they should time sex to
coincide with the woman's ovulation. But Silber said the remarkable survivability of
sperm means most couples don't have to change their normal sex lives at all.

"The average American married couple tends to have sex two or three days a week," said
Silber, author of "How to Get Pregnant."

If sperm can survive for two or three days, that means the average sex life of an American
married couple results in living sperm swimming around the woman's body every single
day of the week.

"The practice to check when you ovulate and not to have sex until you're ovulating is
stupid," Silber said.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-girl-vagina-pregnant-sperm-survival-oral-sex/story?id=9732562&fbclid=IwAR3KeqhvgVikUguZSA0KEV… 4/5
02/03/2019 Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl - ABC News

Silber said because ovulation calendars and methods to detect ovulation are somewhat
inaccurate, couples could miss ovulation and have sex too late.

"Twelve hours after ovulation, the eggs aren't good any more. You want to have the sperm
there ready and waiting for when you ovulated," said Silber. "It's absolutely true that
sperm can last a long time."

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-girl-vagina-pregnant-sperm-survival-oral-sex/story?id=9732562&fbclid=IwAR3KeqhvgVikUguZSA0KEV… 5/5

S-ar putea să vă placă și