An expecting mother does what not to give birth to a
healthy, beautiful baby. Every parent wants a child that would grow up to be
extraordinarily talented, well mannered and what not? Expecting mothers eat
healthy food, drink protein and nutrients rich fluids all day, to welcome the
little bundle of joy with open arms. What if 9 months of all that nurturing
results into something miraculous?
There are a lot of medical miracles which can’t be explained by doctors all
around the one, and this is one of them.
When a mother is expecting twins and when suddenly one of
the twins disappears from the ultrasound, doesn’t necessarily have to mean it
was a miscarriage.
WHAT HAPPENED?
·
In early ages the kids were considered to be a
curse when their unborn twin just vanished from the abdomen of the mother.
Question is where did it go?
·
Even termed as miracles sometimes, these kids
were a challenge to deal with. It was considered to be a tumour living inside
the body of this child. In this age of scientific development, this is no more
considered a miracle; instead it’s a developmental
abnormality.
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
Women giving birth to pregnant children, yes, you read it
right; your eyes aren’t fooling you. Women giving birth to pregnant children
are being talked about in this article.
Question is how is that even possible?
There are no concrete answers in the field of medicine to
answer this, but this is what is believed to have happened- two possible
theories for this:
§
When a lady conceives, during the early stages of monozygotic
twin pregnancy, in which both foetuses share a common placenta, one fetus wraps
around and envelops the other. The enveloped twin becomes a parasite, in that his or her survival
depends on the survival of his or her host twin, by drawing on the host twin's
blood supply. And the parasitic twin develops without a brain (anencephalic)
and lacks some internal organs and hence is unable to survive on it’s own. The
host twin feeds the enveloped twin for the nutrients received over a single
umbilical cord, he or she usually dies before birth.
§
It may be a highly
differentiated form of dermoid cyst or a matured “teratoma”- a tumour with
tissue or organ components resembling to normal derivatives of more than one
germ layer.
A teratoma will contain no organs but rather one or more tissues normally found
in organs such as the brain, liver, and lung; teratomas have been reported to
contain hair, teeth, bone and,
very rarely, more complex organs or processes such as eyes, torso, and hands, feet, or other limbs.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF-
§ A 36-year-old farmer had the embryo of his
twin brother removed in the town of Nagpur, India, in 2006. The man asked for
medical help only after his swollen belly hampered his breathing. Doctors were
certain that the man had a gigantic tumor in his belly. However, they found
fragments of human genitalia, hairs, limbs and jaws in the patient and finally
removed a weird underdeveloped creature having legs and arms with long nails.
§ In 2002, Indian doctors found a fetus in the
body of a six-month-old boy. The dead fetus, which surgeons removed from the
boy, weighed one kilo, whereas the boy himself weighed 6.5 kilos.
§ In November, 2010, a baby girl born in Hong Kong was found to have two
8-10 week old fetuses in her abdomen, originally thought to be tumors. They
were removed by surgery. Reported by the Hong Kong Medical Journal in February
2015.
The
anomalous phenomenon is known as fetus in fetu. Such incidents are extremely
rare: an embryo inside an embryo may appear once in 500,000 pregnancies.
The phenomenon always occurs at an early stage of pregnancy. As a rule, the
fetuses die in mother’s womb.
EXAMPLES IN FICTION-
·
The comedy/horror
film Basket Case centers on a man's murderous parasitic
brother.
·
In the comedy series The
Office (U.S. TV series) Dwight attributes his strength to the dead
fetus he absorbed at birth.
·
In the comedy
series Community (TV series), Chang states that he consumed his
twin sibling's fetus in utero.
·
In the medical TV
drama series Grey's Anatomy ("We Gotta Get Out of this
Place"), a man becomes emotionally attached to his "brother".
This is one of those
developmental abnormalities in a child which cannot be prevented; they can only
be cured-if the child is born alive- through operation. All we can do is hope
for a good day, and a healthy child.
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