Creating life can be very complex, and a lot of things can go wrong. That's why, throughout pregnancy, women undergo various checks and tests to see how the baby's doing.
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However, these tests don't always reveal the whole picture. For example, they couldn't have predicted what happened to this little girl, who was born with two mouths.
One test had revealed an unusual mass on the right side of the baby's mouth. However, doctors didn't know what it was until the girl was born.
At birth, she had not one but two mouths, with a set of lips, an oral cavity, even teeth and a small tongue. Fortunately for the girl, her second mouth doesn't seem to be interfering with her ability to eat or breathe.
This malformation is called Diprosopus or craniofacial duplication. It's a fairly rare defect where a part of or the whole face is duplicated.
Doctors explain that:
Duplication of craniofacial structures typically occurs as part of a syndrome and is often associated with cleft lip and cleft palate.
Fortunately, doctors operated on her at 6 months to remove her second mouth. The surgery was a complete success, and the girl's recovery from it went well.
Since 1900, only 35 cases of humans born with this defect have been recorded worldwide. In extreme cases of this rare disorder, the entire face can be duplicated.
For more details, check out the video above.
