We all know that premature birth can (and often does) lead to a host of problems, not the least of which is the baby, you know, not living very long. Also there can be blindness and a host of other problems.
What about babies that stay in the womb too long? Is it possible, say ferinstance in an area without access to modern medicine, for something to go haywire in a pregnancy and the fetus stays in the womb so long that mother and/or fetus die? What if the baby is born, but just really really late? Will he/she have health problems?
Um. Generally the concern is that the baby can get too large and require a c-section or have umbilical cord problems. I’ve never heard of a baby just…not being born. A goofy placenta will cause late term birth…but still, a woman will give birth to a stillborn if need be. I suppose there are cases where a dead fetus killed the mother.
As far as health concerns, I think brain damage would be the biggest one.
This is fiction, not a cite, but I immediately thought of Alder’s wife in “The Other Wind:”
“Nothing was wrong at all until the time came for the child to be born. But it was late, and then very late. The midwives tried to bring on the birth with herbs and spells, but it was as if the child would not let her bear it. It would not be separated from her. It would not be born. And it was not born. It took her with it.”
There are a few documented cases of babies simply not being born, dying in the womb, and the mother surviving. The dead baby calcifies over time, forming a lithopedion. The current record is 60+ years of survival past the failed pregnancy, with lithopedion still in the woman.
The complications, IIRC (IANAD). The baby will get too big, the placenta will no longer support it; the baby will begin to consume the accumulated baby fat, and late babies are often described as slack-skinned, very pale (and long-ish hair). This oxygen and nutrition starvation can result in brain damage and other medical problems. Also, the risk of meconium inhalation choking the baby during birth (yum, look that up!) is much higher the longer the baby goes.
It is strongly recommended to all women that by 42 weeks (2 weeks overdue) the doctor WILL induce.
Lithopedions only occur when the fetus is outside the uterus. It’s a very rare type of ectopic pregnancy where the fetus implants in the intestines or somewhere. Usually the fetus dies early on, though there have been a few that grew to viability (and were removed surgically, obviously). Considering how rare abdominal pregnancies are, and how few of them lead to lithopedions, and how few lived to an advanced age, I’d be very surprised if there was much overlap, if any, between the ones that turned into lithopedions and the ones that went to full term.