A woman who had her fallopian tubes removed gave birth to a healthy, viable baby in the first such documented case ever.
Elizabeth Kough, of Kearney, Missouri, had both of the tubes that connect her ovaries to her uterus removed in 2015 after having three children.
However, the 39-year-old started feeling the tell-tale signs of pregnancy last year.
After taking a pregnancy test, and visiting her local hospital for an ultrasound, it was confirmed that she was pregnant with her fourth child.
Benjamin was born in March weighing seven pounds and six ounces – and doctors even checked during delivery to confirm that the tubes had been removed.
Doctors told Good Morning America that there have only been three other such cases recorded in medical literature, but this is the first that resulted in a healthy birth.
Elizabeth Kough, 39, of Kearney, Missouri, had both of her fallopian tubes removed in 2015. Pictured: Kough with her son, Benjamin
Last year, Kough discovered she was pregnant, even though the procedure is a nearly foolproof form of contraception. Pictured: Kough with her son, Benjamin
Kough told Good Morning America that there were several reasons she decided to have her fallopian tubes removed.
One is that the procedure, known as a bilateral salpingectomy, has been shown to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, which runs in Kough's family.
'I also hit age 35 and they medically say at that age pregnancy becomes more high-risk,' she told the news program.
'I was also divorced and single and had three children, which is quite a blessing for a family, but I thought that was probably enough.'
The operation, which Kough had done by her OB-GYN in Virginia - where she used to live - is usually a nearly foolproof method of contraception.
Normally when a woman becomes pregnant the egg is fertilised in the fallopian tube and then travels into the womb to grow into an embryo.
Although rare, there are records of women getting pregnant even though they don't have fallopian tubes, which carry eggs out of the ovaries.
Davor Jurkovic, a consultant gynaecologist at University College Hospital in London, England, revealed it is not possible to completely remove the fallopian tubes during surgery.
He said: 'It is not possible to remove the tubes completely at surgery as a part of them is passing through the uterine muscle and therefore it has to be left behind.
'It is very likely that the end of one of her tubes has re-opened after surgery.
'This would have allowed the sperm to enter
