Lithopedion

  The first thing that caught my attention with this short story is the Title. What is a lithopedion was the the question I asked myself AFTER reading the story. Well according to the dictionary definition a lithopedion is a dead fetus that has been calcified and is usually grown extraunterine (outside the uterus).
  The first sentence of the story "she delivered her baby 20 years too late" also rose some questions marks for me as well. How can you deliver a baby 20 years late and not know you were ever pregnant. Further on in the story I got my answer, the protagonist met with her ex-boyfriend of hers who was also the father of the dead baby at a park. It seems to me that they both are not in the best of shape mentally or physically. The ex-boyfriend or husband whose name is Chaz doesn't say exactly their relationship together asked her how did she know ? In this moment of the story I learned that she went to the doctor and they thought they saw cancer and suggested a hysterectomy but she suggested more test and they saw the baby there the lithopedion. All those years she avoided her excruciating stomach pains because of her boyfriend that told her it was just her imagination that she was feeding off to make them real. Now hearing this I now felt the confusion and the numbness she must felt knowing that all those years of pain was because she was holding life in a awkward way and   the pain she felt was not her imagination.
   After they chatted awhile about the past, she questioned Chas about what they should do and he asked her "what do you think we should do ?". Now here is where I get confused in the story as if this her thought of imagination or did this really happen. After Chas ask that question the protagonist seems to go into either a thought about a couple with a better life who has cookie-cutter like relationship and home, who planned their Childs arrival or maybe adoption of a child great.
  However there is other details in this story that also makes me think a whole other scenario or outcome of the question Chas ask "what do you think we should do?". I honestly fell that the couple went to another persons house and swapped babies with a couple who seems to have a great life with their new born baby. The reason why I say this is because of the feelings and emotions the main character may have felt after finding her baby she carried for 20 years is dead, also after suffering multiple miscarriages the sense of never bearing a child, herself and Chas could have developed the feeling that they deserved this baby especially from a newly-wed couple who can conceive again. Aside from the emotions the story points to this suggestion as well for example the couple both leaving out the back door heading towards the river and now the baby having a name "jasper" and in the beginning of the story she did not have a name to give the taxi driver when he asked. So this new name for the baby after leaving a new couple house has raised confusion in me. Why she kept the dead baby for so long still suggest that there is something mentally wrong with her as well. This story was good, kept me on edge and at the end a mind twister.