A baby with four arms and four legs was recently born in China. The baby, who also is suffering from pneumonia and congenital heart disease, is said to have had a "parasitic headless twin attached to his torso." In other words, the babies were supposed to be twins, but one never developed properly and became deformed.
The baby boy has thankfully undergone successful surgery and is in stable condition since the extra limbs have been removed. The father of the baby, only identified as Mr. Chen, has admitted to feeling guilty over the fact that he often chose work over taking his wife to many of her prenatal appointments.
But. That said, the mother did have at least five routine exams at local clinics during her pregnancy. And not one -- not a single one -- indicated there was anything wrong.
Of course, most mothers go in for prenatal appoints much, much more often than five times over the course of nine months. But still, it is a little odd and concerning that nothing was discovered at all at any of the mother's appointments, regardless of how little she went. I mean, this isn't a minor deformity we're talking about here; this is a child with an extra set of both arms and legs.
As unsettling a fact as this is, anyone who's ever given birth knows: Nothing is 100 percent until you deliver, and you really can't know for certain what health problems and issues your child will have until after he or she is born.
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Some things aren't preventable, and this very well sounds like it was one of those things, so it's important that we all prepare ourselves for things not to go as planned when we give birth -- regardless of how much we took care of ourselves during pregnancy.
Thank goodness this sweet baby, and his mama, are okay.
Can you believe this? Did you ever miss a prenatal appointment when you were pregnant?
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