Medical Mystery: Baby Girl Born Pregnant With Her Own Twins!

Medical Mystery: Baby Girl Born Pregnant With Her Own Twins!

A baby came out of her mother’s womb to be found “pregnant” herself with twins. This rare condition is exactly the case of a newborn baby girl in Hong Kong who appeared to have something unusual in her abdomen.

At first, doctors diagnosed the masses found in a 9-pound infant as tumors. They soon found out that the baby was carrying something else. She was carrying twin fetuses of her siblings!

The mother of the girl suspected to have been pregnant with triplets, but the surviving baby interred her siblings inside her body. The two fetuses each had four limbs, a spine, brain matter, rib cage, intestines, and anus, but doesn't have the same weight. One of them weighed 14.2 grams, and the other is 9.3 grams. Also, each had an umbilical cord connected to a single placenta-like mass.

This unimaginable rare condition is known as fetus-in-fetu. It occurs in only about 1 in every 500,000 births. This happens when a partially developed fetus becomes incorporated into a normally developing fetus (its twin) in the womb, according to the case study published in the Hong Kong Medical Journal.

According to the researchers, “The baby girl was obviously too young to have conceived the fetuses herself. Instead, it’s likely that the girl was once one of triplets. Then, for some mysterious reason, the two smaller fetuses were absorbed into the body of the remaining child.”

While Dr. Draion Burch, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Pittsburgh said: “The fetuses would likely have still been alive and growing when they were absorbed into the surviving baby’s body. Once there, however, their development couldn’t proceed normally.”

“Weird things happen early, early in the pregnancy that we just don’t understand. This is one of those medical mysteries.” He added.

Fortunately, the baby girl born in 2010 successfully recovered from the rare condition after having surgery at 3 weeks old!