India is a country with some of the most incredible births. The largest newborn in 2016 was born here, as well as the oldest couple to conceive a kid. And now, India is making news again due to the birth of a child who had two heads, three arms, and two hearts.
Shaheen Khan, like other parents, was expecting typical infants. They genuinely thought they were going to have two complete twin babies. When Shaheen delivered her child on March 28 in Ratlam, India, she and her husband were astonished to discover that it appeared to be a baby with two heads.
The condition is known as “Dicephalic parapagus,” which happens when the torsos of two newborns are joined together at the neck. It is frequently followed by a stillbirth.
The conjoined twins, on the other hand, have successfully survived and been taken to a hospital in the neighboring city of Indore, where they will be examined by specialists. However, Shaheen remained at Ratlam’s district hospital.
Dr. Lahoti, stated, “These kinds of cases are rare and the condition of babies remains uncertain, especially in the initial days. Due to this, we have kept them under observation. We have not planned for any surgery on the patient.”
This is not the first time that infants with this condition have been born in India.
Two twin boys were also reported to have been born with the illness in India last year. Even though they had been immediately placed on a ventilator, they died just 24 hours later.
In 2019, a 21-year-old Indian woman gave birth to a twin-headed and triple-armed baby in the country. The Ahirwar family said that when Babita Ahirwar delivered the child on November 23, they were startled. Jaswant stated, “We are shocked. It is unbelievable. Everyone is shocked to see them. We cannot believe our child has two heads.”
Babita said to a local news agency, “It was a mixed feeling when the nurses handed over the baby to me. Initially, I thought it was a twin, but when the nurses removed the towel, I was shocked to see our firstborn with two heads and three hands. All we wanted was a normal and healthy baby, but the almighty wanted to punish us this way. I don’t know why.”
Conjoined twins are formed when two fertilized eggs join together at some point during pregnancy, usually around the fifth or sixth week. The splitting of a fertilized egg begins approximately several weeks after conception in conjoined twins. The most frequent type of conjoined twins are those that are joined at the chest or abdomen.
Dicephalus parapagus twins have different heads despite the fact that they are joined at the pelvis and in part or all of the abdomen and chest. Depending on their size and gender, Dicephalus parapagus twins can have two, three (tribrachius), four (tetrabrachius), or five arms, as well as two or three legs.
According to experts, this sort of conjoined twin is incredibly unusual. The frequency of conjoined twins had previously been estimated at one in every 50,000 to 100,000 births, depending on the region, according to the American Journal of Medical Genetics. According to the journal Pediatrics Surgery, around 11% of these are dicephalus parapagus twins.
The result of twin separation surgery is determined by the twins’ connection.
