Baby born with two heads!

Boy or girl; it does not matter—as long as the baby is healthy, we say. 10 fingers, 10 toes, two ears, one nose, two eyes… But what happens when your baby comes out with two heads and one body?

A caesarean birth

A baby with two heads was born in Brazil. The mommy, Maria de Nazare, thought she was going to give birth to twins initially but had to undergo a caesarean section at the Anajas hospital. Her newborn, named Emanoel and Jesus as they were born around Christmas, weighed in at 9.9 pounds.

25-year-old Maria was all excited to welcome twins into the world but the tests she took showed that the baby had two spines, two brains but shared only one pelvis, liver, heart and lungs. Maria lives in a rural area and discovered the abnormality only after her first ever scan, which was minutes before the baby was born.

Claudionor Assis de Vasconcelos, the director of the hospital said: “When doctors scanned her they realized that the baby had two heads and that a normal birth would be a great risk both for mother and baby. The caesarean took an hour because the baby was sitting down.”

He added: “Despite all the problems we have as a small interior hospital we managed to save both mother and baby, which was our aim. And for us it was a great surprise to find out that the child was in really good health.”

Conjoined twins can become a baby with two heads

Conjoined twins

Apparently this is the second registered case of a baby with two heads born in Brazil, just this year alone. The other baby, birthed by Sueli Ferreira who is 27, passed on just several hours after birth due to lack of oxygen in one of the heads.

So, this case is actually a case of conjoined twins—baby with two heads sharing one body. It is a condition called dicephalic parapagus which is a rare and unusual form of conjoinment.

Depending on which form of conjoinment, some cases the twins can be separated via surgery but in this case, since they share the same body, Jesus and Emanoel will never be separated.

Here’s another case of “two-headed” babies that grew into teenagers and carried out their lives like normal teens—they got their drivers license, play sports and hang out with friends. If Abigail and Brittany Hensel can do it, we hope that Jesus and Emanoel will have the same shot at a normal life.

What does the future hold for the twins?

We know for sure that Maria will love her babies just as much as her three existing kids. The director, Neila Dahas, of Santa Casa hospital said: “If both their brains are functioning, how are we going to choose which head to remove? We are not considering the possibility of surgery. What we’ve got to think about at this moment is to maintain the children in good condition and see how they will develop.”

Republished with permission from: theAsianParent Singapore

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Written by

Felicia Chin

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