Baby born carrying twin fetuses
You're not reading that incorrectly: An infant in Hong Kong was born pregnant with twins. This case is one of 500,000 that happen every year.
CULTURA ASIA/WONWOO LEE/GETTY IMAGESA Hong Kong baby was born with babies of her own.
Babies having babies!
A baby girl who was born with two tumors in her abdomen was actually bearing twin fetuses, the Hong Kong Medical Journal reported this week.
The 8- to 10-week-old “babies” weren’t hers, of course, but were simply fertilized eggs that ended up being absorbed into her body as she developed in the womb.
Both had started sprouting limbs, ribs, intestines and skin. And both sported an umbilical cord to a rudimentary placenta.
HONG KONG MEDICAL JOURNALThis X-ray shows each twin’s spine.
"Since it is impossible for the little girl to have conceived the pregnancy on her own, the fertilization of the twin fetuses, of course, belongs to her parents," Dr. Yu Kai-man told the South China Morning Post.
The girl, born in 2010, had surgery to remove the fetuses when she was two weeks old. She recovered from the rare condition, which is called fetus in fetu and has been documented only 200 times in history.
Doctors believe it happens once in every 500,000 births, and is rarely reported.
