Baby Is Born 'Pregnant' With His Own Twin Brother

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In a bizarre medical condition, a newborn baby in Thane was found to be ‘pregnant’ with his half-formed twin brother feeding off his blood supply.

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The nearly 9-pound baby girl had a rare condition called fetus-in-fetu, which happens when a partially developed fetus becomes incorporated into a normally developing fetus (its twin) in the womb.

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Technically, it's not a pregnancy. Not only was this baby a biological boy who did not have a uterus, but typically the second baby or part of one is found in the retroperitoneal area of the body (i.e., inside a part of the abdomen).

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In the case out of India, doctors noted the in fetus twin during a prenatal scan, then removed it after the baby's birth. The mass had actual bones, arms, legs, and even a brain, although it was not a functional human being.

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The mass was between the girl's liver and left kidney, and it included two partially formed fetus-like structures, one weighing half an ounce and the other weighing a third of an ounce.

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Each structure included a spine, intestines, bones with bone marrow, "primitive" brain matter, a rib cage and an umbilical cord, according to the study. The study authors said the partially formed fetuses and the baby girl shared the same DNA, fitting a popular theory that the woman was initially pregnant with identical triplets, but researchers aren't sure this is what happened.

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Judging by the body parts they found in the baby girl, the doctors determined that the absorbed twins could have been up to 10 weeks old before their growth stopped and they were absorbed.

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But the mechanism for this "absorption" is not fully understood, the study authors wrote, so it's also possible the extra fetuses were absorbed earlier and grew with the baby girl in the womb.

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The authors suggested that perhaps these structures may have been a teratoma, a kind of tumor containing different types of tissue that are usually seen in women of reproductive age, rather than absorbed identical siblings.

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Gynecologist Dr Neena Nichlani, who was part of the team that operated on the baby, said, “It is a case of monozygotic twin pregnancy sharing single placenta, where one foetus is wrapped around the other and feeds off its host’s body.”

“It is a very rare condition and this is for the first time I have encountered such a case in my entire medical career... Both the baby and the mother are doing well,” she added.

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There are only 200 recorded cases of the condition.

Whilst, in this case, the “twin” mass was identified and removed at birth, they can grow inside grown human beings and go unnoticed for decades.

#12

Jenny Kavanagh had a 10cm mass growing inside her life ovary for 40 years.

After seeking medical help for severe period pains, doctors were shocked to discover the parasitic mass, which had a face, an eye, a tooth and long black hair.

“I try not to feel sad about it,” the Londoner told Mirror Online at the time.

“I try to remember that it had no heart and no brain. And that it would have almost certainly killed me if they hadn’t found it and removed it.”