Baby born with two faces

[Kahnee]

Freaky...

 

The parents of an Indian infant girl born with two faces say she is eating and breathing normally despite having two pairs of eyes and lips and two noses.

 

The one-month-old baby, named Lali, is the first child of factory worker Vinod Kumar and his wife Sushma.

 

She has caused a sensation, attracting a stream of curious observers and others who consider her a deity in the deeply religious Hindu-majority country.

 

Lali's extremely rare condition is known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Her facial features are duplicated with the exception of her ears - she has two.

 

"She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time," the director of Saifi Hospital, Sabir Ali, said

 

"She is leading a normal life with no breathing difficulties.''

 

He said he saw no need for surgery.

 

Lali's father said he was apprehensive when he first saw his daughter.

 

"I had never seen something like this in my life so naturally I was a little scared when I first saw her," he said.

 

Her mother, Sushma, told The Hindustan Times her daughter was "just like any other child".

 

"Initially we had some problem in accepting the child but now everything is fine,'' she said.

 

The family has no plans to consult doctors to check if the girl can receive treatment or corrective surgery.

 

"The doctor said everything is normal when she was born. So where's the need to get medical help?" 24-year-old Kumar said.

 

"She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her."

 

Doctors said it was an extremely rare case, with the girl having two skulls joined together, and that separating them was out of the question.

 

"Since the heads are fused, separating them is not possible," paediatrician D.K Gupta of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences told The Hindustan Times newspaper.

 

But doctors said the girl should be examined thoroughly to study the possibility of complications.

 

"Clearly the child is in no immediate danger but it has to be checked whether the oral and nasal cavity and other passages" are functioning properly, Dr Gupta said.

 

The case comes just months after Indian doctors performed a rare, marathon surgery to remove the extra limbs of a girl born with four arms and legs.

 

Two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma's case captivated the nation last year as domestic and international media focused on her complicated surgery performed in southern Bangalore city in November.

 

This year, Lakshmi started taking her first steps with the help of a baby walker, delighting her parents and doctors.

 

Lakshmi, named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, was born fused to the pelvis of a twin that had stopped developing in her mother's womb - a condition that occurs once in 50,000 conjoined twin births.

 

Kumar said he had heard about Lakshmi, but did not want to change anything about his daughter's features.

 

"Whatever God has given me is acceptable. What can we do about it?" he said.

 

[ManxRed]

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