Baby boy found to have two fetuses growing inside his tummy

A baby boy had two other fetuses growing inside him in an extraordinarily rare case. 

Last month, a 32-year-old woman in India visited her local hospital for a routine scan while 35 weeks pregnant.  

Though her previous scans had come back normal, doctors discovered “an additional structure containing bones” in the unborn baby boy’s abdomen. 

Further testing revealed two other malformed fetuses inside the fetus’ abdomen. 

The exceedingly rare phenomenon, dubbed “fetus in fetu,” has only been recorded about 200 times in medical literature. It’s unclear how many of these involved multiple fetuses.  

The woman delivered her son on February 1, 2025, at about 35 weeks pregnant, and doctors removed two fetuses, which had stopped growing at some point during the pregnancy, from the baby’s stomach. 

According to local reporting, the mother and baby boy are healthy.  

However, it’s believed the two other fetuses were too underdeveloped to survive.  

Dr Prasad Agarwal, who conducted the scan, told local media: “I was lucky and vigilant enough to notice something very unusual with this baby, grossly normal growing fetus with a few bones and a fetus-like structure in its abdomen. 

“It struck me immediately that this is not normal. It was ‘fetus in fetu,’ one of the rarest cases in the world.” 

The new case is one of the eight-in-10 in which the absorbed fetal tissue gets lodged in the abdomen, where doctors have a high chance of removing it without harming the mother or the baby. 

Other times, it has been found in a baby’s mouth, scrotum, tailbone or brain.  

For example, in 2015, Chinese doctors successfully removed a fetus that was found in the scrotum of a 20-day-old infant.  

And in one case reported last year, a one-year-old girl in China suffered developmental delays and a larger than average head when doctors found a fetus growing inside her skull.  

Scans revealed a five-inch mass in her skull, slightly bigger than a baseball. Embedded within the mass were long chunks of bone.  

Though doctors were able to remove the fetus, the girl suffered severe brain damage and died less than two weeks later.