The extremely rare event, fetus-in-fetu, occurred in a newborn baby at Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod, Israel.

A baby in a baby?
The baby girl was operated on by doctors, and the embryo of her twin in the abdomen was removed not long after she was born.

Dr. Neeraj Desai said, “It’s just a super rare anomaly.”

Doctors first discovered the abnormality when doing an ultrasound of the baby’s abdomen in the last months of pregnancy. They noticed that the baby’s abdomen was noticeably enlarged.

The X-ray image shows a partially developed embryo with some bones and a heart.

After the baby was born, doctors performed an ultrasound and X-ray examination. The doctor discovered inside the baby’s belly was an embryo less than 10 weeks old.

Fortunately, doctors performed surgery on the girl to remove the embryo and two identical amniotic sacs in the baby’s abdomen. The baby’s health will soon recover.


A Rare Case That Occurs 1 Out Of 500,000 Births
Fetus-in-fetu is extremely common, with only about 1 in 500,000 births worldwide. Doctors have figured out what exactly lead to this rare condition. However, scientists believe that this is a rare kind of “parasitic twin,” as per Arizona State University.


Such parasitic twins form in an identical-twin pregnancy, one of the fetuses absorbs the other early in pregnancy.

“IT’S NOT SOMETHING THAT A REGULAR PERSON SHOULD EVEN THINK ABOUT WORRYING ABOUT WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO THEIR BABY.”

This is not the first prenatal anomaly that surprises doctors. In 2016, an extremely rare two-headed baby was born in Indonesia.

Mysteriously mysterious...