Babies need to develop inside the womb during pregnancy for nine months. During these critical times we are hoping and praying that they will grow healthy until it’s time. With the help of technology, any signs of abnormalities can be detected early and avoided if possible. But sometimes even with these hi-tech equipment, some rare diseases and deformities are inevitable.
Through out time, many babies are born with bizarre disorder or disease and it totally tore the hearts of many, especially their parents. What’s even worse is, these babies faced discrimination and bullying from insensitive and uneducated people. And to help these babies from being mocked off, we need to be aware and educate others about these birth defects. Below are the information about these rare illnesses.
1. Harlequin-Type Ichthyosis
A Harlequin baby was born in Gilgit Pakistan in 2010, People started calling the baby “Alien baby” because the baby had blood-red eyes and tiger stripes on his body.
Harlequin-Type Ichthyosis is a rare skin disease with massive scales on the body which is reddish in color. This unusual birth disorder happens when Keratin layer is condensed in fetal human skin, a mutation in the protein gene. Eyes, ears, mouth and other parts may be constricted. Bacterial infection is at high-risk for babies with Harlequin.
2. Congenital Arhinia
Timothy Eli Thompson was prematurely born without nasal passages or sinus cavities known as complete congenital arhinia. He was born on March 4, 2015 in Alabama. Despite his appearance, her mother called him a “perfect miracle baby.”
Congenital Arhinia is a rare condition wherein a child is born without a nose and parts of the olfactory ‘the sense of smell’ system. This condition is extremely rare, that it only has a chance of happening to one in 197 million people, with less than 50 cases recorded worldwide.
3. Lamellar Ichthyosis
Song Sheng, from Jinhu, eastern China was born without pores in his skin which means his body cannot cool itself. He was called fish boy by locals after developing scales within days of his birth caused by his lack of pores.
Lamellar Ichthyosis is a rare inherited skin disorder, affecting around 1 in 600,000 people. Babies suffering from this skin disorder shed the outer layer of their skin in just 10–14 days after birth as the primary sign. Vast scaling of the skin that looks like a fish scales, elbow, neck, armpit and groins skin starts tiling. In severe cases, scaling is visible all over the body with increasing age. Having this skin disorder, the body can’t sweat to cool down the body causing the fish like scaling on the skin.
4. Epidermolysis Bullosa
Baby Easton was born with Epidermolysis Bullosa on August 23, 2012 – a severely painful, incurable rare genetic skin disease. Skin on most of his limbs were missing, covered in scary, deep red, open wounds.
Known as Butterfly Disease, it is an inherited connective tissue disease causing blisters in the skin and mucosal membranes. It is a result of a defect in anchoring between the epidermis and dermis, resulting in friction and skin fragility. So fragile, if the skin is rubbed it can cause blisters, mostly affected areas are hands and feet. The cause of this disorder is genetic mutation and for the whole life, you’ll be treating the wounds that refuses to heal. This disease may happen in 1 out of 50,000 people.
5. Anencephaly
In 2006, a bizarre-looking baby was born in Charikot, Nepal, attracting a huge number of onlookers. The baby suffers from a cephalic disorder called Anencephaly. Its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets. However, the unnamed baby died after half an hour upon its birth.
Anencephaly is a cephalic disorder that is the result of Neural tube defect. Babies with this condition do not survive, they are born without forebrain and the rest of brain tissue is commonly uncovered (No bone or skin).
5. Polymelia
A child was born in Jharkhand, India, on April 18, 2015 with four arms and four legs attracting thousand of religious believers worshipping him as a Hindu God.
Polymelia is a birth defect in which a child is born with multiple limbs. The extra limbs came from supposedly twins, conjoined twins and are commonly deformed. This happens when Embryo starts as conjoined twins but didn’t continue to develop. These extra legs and extra arms varies from child to child.
6. Cyclopia
In 2012, a baby was born with no mouth, no nose, and one severely deformed eye with two pupils. However, due to the absence of a mouth and nose, the newborn immediately passed away from suffocation.
Cyclopia is a strange disorder, a defect that resulted from the failure of the embryonic forebrain to divide orbital cavities to form two eyes. Infants with this rare condition are born with just one eye in the middle of their forehead just like the mythical creature Cyclops.
7. Ectopia Cordis
On March 2015, a baby girl was born in India with her heart outside her body. She had a rare condition called “ectopia cordis”, which affects about eight in every one million births.
Ectopia Cordis is a congenital malformation in which the heart is abnormally located either in the abdominal cavity, neck or outside the chest. In most cases, the heart protrudes outside the chest through a split sternum. Babies suffering from Ectopia Cordis have good chances of survival, but doctor’s needs suitable condition of the baby to perform surgery and relocate the heart.
8. Hydrocephalus
Baby Roona Begum from Tripura India was born with Hydrocephalus. Her head enlarged up to 94 centimeters in circumference and she undergoes treatment and surgery.
Hydrocephalus is a rare disorder also known as “water on the brain.” It is common in infants though it can occur at any age. The Cerebro-spinal Fluid uncharacteristically gets collected in the brain and the result is swelling of the head. At the very high rate the head enlarged which can cause death and surgery is needed to treat this case.
9. Craniopagus Parasiticus
On March 2004, an Egyptian baby girl named Manar Maged was born with her twin Islaam attached to her head, a condition known as Craniopagus Parasiticus, or Parasitic Twin. Islaam was basically nothing but a head and upper torso, but was able to smile and blink on her own.
Manar underwent an operation to remove the parasitic head in a hospital in Banha in February 2005. The operation was successful, and she became the first baby to survive the surgical removal of a parasitic head. However due to persistent infection in her brain, she only lived for additional 13 months and died on March 25, 2006.
Craniopagus Parasiticus is a medical condition in which a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped (or underdeveloped) body is attached to the head of a developed twin. There have only been ten documented cases of this phenomenon, though to-date there have been at least eighty separate cases of this phenomenon written about in various records. Only three ever have been documented by modern medicine to have survived birth.
