A baby in India was born with his own twin brother in his tummy as if he was pregnant.
After the unnamed boy was born, doctors discovered a second half-formed male baby with legs, one arm and a brain behind the newborn’s stomach.
Doctors operated to remove the 7cm “twin” and the newborn boy is now healthy, Independent UK reported.
A radiologist noticed the unusual mass inside the baby’s foetal sac during a routine scan earlier this month.
The parasitic twin had no skull, despite having a small head and brain.
Born to a 19-year-old mother in Mumbra, India, the “twin” birth was a case of foetus in foetu, a rare congenital anomaly in which a malformed and parasitic foetus grows within the body of a baby.
The phenomenon, has been reported in about 200 cases in the medical literature. According to NBC News, in 2006, doctors in Pakistan removed two fetuses from a 2-month-old girl named Nazia. And in 2011, an 18-year-old boy had his retained twin removed in a major surgery, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
In rare instances, fetuses that die in utero can become calcified and turn into stone, Live Science reported. In August 2014, doctors in India removed a lithopedion, or stone baby, that a 60-year-old woman had carried in her body for 36 years. She went to the doctor complaining of abdominal pain and a lump in her lower belly.
