Foetus in Foetu: Baby born ‘pregnant’ with twin brother startles doctors in Mumbai, India

Human body is an amazing creature of god. This recent birth in India is the living proof of the fact. A baby was born ‘pregnant’ with his own twin brother. This news sounds like a science fiction, but it is true. In Mumbai’s Mumbra, Thane District, a woman gives birth to a baby boy who’s already pregnant with his own twin brother. The baby was born on July 20, leaving doctors in shock. According to reports, the newborn had to undergo a surgery on July 24 to have the foetus removed. Medical science has named this bizarre medical anomaly as ‘foeuts in foetu’. 

Foetus in foetu is a developmental anomaly in which a mass of tissue resembling a foetus is formed inside the body of a baby. This bizarre anomaly is estimated to occur in 1 in 500,000 live births. The baby born with the foetus inside is referred to as ‘host baby’ while the other is called ‘parasitic twin’. 

Surgeons at Titan Hospital in Thane removed the foetus of size seven centimetres. The foetus was malformed parasitic twin. According to Gynaecologist Dr Neena Nichlani, “It is a case of monozygotic twin pregnancy sharing single placenta, where one foetus wraps itself around and envelops the other and robs the host of its nutrition. It can be implanted in skull, abdomen or tail bone of the host. Sometimes it can also lead to the death of the host because both get nutrition from a single cord.”

The baby is now well after removal of the foetus. Radiologist Dr Bhavna Thorat found an anomaly during a routine scan of the pregnant mother at Bilal Hospital in Mumbra earlier in July. When the baby was observed, another small baby was found inside the abdomen of new born. 

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Dr. Thorat said, “It was inside a foetal sac of the newborn. I could see bones of the upper and lower limbs of the foetus. The unique thing about it was I could see a tiny head with the brain inside. However, this parasitic twin didn’t have a skull bone.”

The baby is doing fine now, but he’ll certainly have a story to tell the world when he’ll grow up. 

Earlier in 1999, a case from Nagpur shocked the doctors around the world. A 36-year-old man, Bhagat had an abnormally bulging belly. But one night, his problems came out to be larger than he imagined. He was rushed to a hospital where he was operated to remove the giant tumour. But when the doctors operated his stomach, they found something extraordinary that horrified them to the core. There were a number of bones inside his belly. One limb came out, then the other. There were parts of hair, limbs, jaws, etc. 

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According to the doctors there was some half-formed creature in his body which was very much developed. Later, doctor realised that Bhagat suffered from an anomaly called foetus in foetu. 

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