A baby born with a rare condition known as mermaid syndrome died at a hospital in India just minutes after it was born.
A mother in India is mourning the loss of her child after she gave birth to a newborn with a rare congenital development disorder that resulted in the infant’s legs being fused together like a “mermaid fin,” according to The Sun.
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Disksha Kamble, 25, gave birth at a hospital in western India, but her newborn child only survived for 15 minutes due to the rare disorder called sirenomelia, or mermaid syndrome, which causes abnormalities of the lower spine and legs.
“It is an extremely rare condition. The mother had arrived at 7 a.m. and by 9 a.m. she had delivered the child through natural birth. We were anticipating a head or legs but a strange ‘fin-like’ mass came out,” Dr. Sanjay Bansode, gynecologist at the hospital where Kamgble gave birth, said. “Every one of us were shocked to see the baby. My students had never seen something like this before. The baby not only had legs fused together and missing genitals but also had other internal anomalies like renal and lung deformities. The baby could not survive more than 15 minutes.”
Kamble had been taken to Swami Ramanand Teerth Rural Medical College by her husband, Nanoba Kamble, 32, on Monday morning after she went into labor. Having only had one sonogram during her pregnancy, the infant’s condition was not known until birth.
Weighing 3 pounds 9 ounces, the newborn’s sex was unable to be determined due to the way in which the legs were fused together.
“My wife and I are shattered with the loss of our child. We have never seen or known a baby like this. I saw the child after delivery and was shocked to see it had no legs. It was very tiny and the legs were fused,” said Nanoba, the infant’s father. “We are daily wage labours and somehow make our ends meet.”
This was not the couple’s first pregnancy, though they lost their first child due to a birth defect three years ago. Their second child, a baby girl, was born healthy.
“After we lost our first child within a day of her birth we went for ultrasounds during our second pregnancy but only went for it once this time. We were told the baby had some issues but it was too late and we were prepared for everything,” Kamble said. “But we are devastated and cannot believe how and why our baby was born like a fish.”
This was not the first baby in the country to be born with the rare condition. In December, a mother in Kolkata, India, gave birth to an infant with the same condition. Her baby died four hours after birth.
