Colombian woman gives birth to baby with twin growing inside her
Rare case prompted surgery for infant
Rare case prompted surgery for infant
In February, a Colombian woman gave birth to a baby whose twin was growing inside of her abdomen.
The newborn girl had a half-formed fetus without a heart or brain inside her belly: An example of a rare, but not unprecedented, type of birth known as fetus-in-fetu which is thought to occur in about one in every 500,000 births, reports .
Originally, doctors thought that the fetus had a cyst on her liver. But that changed when the mother, Monica Vega, visited Dr. Miguel Parra-Saavedra, a high-risk pregnancy specialist in Baranquilla, Columbia. Parra-Saavedra was able to see that was believed to be a cyst was actually a tiny infant who was "supported by a separate umbilical cord drawing blood where it connected to the larger twin바카라 게임 웹사이트s intestine," per . The connection through the umbilical chord is why the smaller fetus is frequently known as a parasitic twin, according to The Times.
This was discovered at 35 weeks' gestation, five weeks before full-term birth, which sets this fetus-in-fetu case apart from others that have occurred over the past few years, such as those in and .
Two weeks later at 37 weeks gestation, Vega gave birth via cesarean section to a 7-pound baby girl named Itzamara. One day later, the newborn underwent laparoscopic surgery to remove the fetal twin, who measured at about 2 inches long, Parra-Saavedra told .
Both mom and baby girl are doing well.