In a very sordid report earlier this year, a baby was apparently born ‘pregnant’ with her own sibling and needed an operation on herself to remove her twin.
This is one of the most bizarre cases of pregnancy you would ever come across.
The Bizarre Birth
Last March, a mother gave birth to a baby girl that she named Itzmara through a cesarean delivery, which is a normal procedure that women do when giving a vaginal birth would put the baby or the mother at risk.
However, just a mere 24 hours later, doctors had to perform a similar operation on Itzmara herself because she had apparently absorbed her twin while they’re in the womb, making her “pregnant” as well.
The case was first discovered when the mother, Monica Vega of Barranquilla, Colombia, had an ultrasound while she was seven months into her pregnancy. Via the ultrasound, the doctors discovered that Vega apparently had two umbilical cords inside of her.
While one of the umbilical cords connected the baby to the mother, the other apparently connected the baby to a mass, which was confirmed to be her parasitic twin.
It was then diagnosed that the baby Itzmara had “fetus in fetu,” which is a rare condition that occurs when the twin is shown to have the malformed body of its twin.
From this, the doctors then decided that Itzmara needed to be delivered so a C-section can be done on her right away. Per the doctors, leaving the baby with its parasitic twin has the risk of the twin itself growing and damaging Itzmara’s developing organs.
And so, Itzmara was given a C-section after Vega gave birth to her. The mass reportedly had neither heart nor brain and the baby is reported to be in good health following the surgery.
Per information from the National Institutes of Health, Itzmara’s case of fetus in fetu is very rare, happening only once in around 500,000 births.
However, not all cases of the condition are similar because there are some that develop once the child is all grown up and even some that don’t affect the person once they’re an adult.
