A Colombian Woman Gave Birth To A Baby With A Twin Growing Inside Her

In February, a Columbian woman gave birth to a baby whose twin was growing inside of her abdomen. Umm, whaaaat?!

Simply put: the newborn had her own little one too, albeit only half-formed sans-brain and heart, inside of her belly-an example of a rare (but not unprecedented!) type of birth known as "fetus-in-fetu," which is thought to occur in about one in every 500,000 births, reports The New York Times .

Originally, docs thought that the fetus had a cyst on her liver. But that all changed when the mother, Monica Vega, visited Miguel Parra-Saavedra, MD, a high-risk pregnancy specialist in Baranquilla, Columbia. Parra-Saavedra was able to see that the believed-cyst was actually a tiny infant who was "supported by a separate umbilical cord drawing blood where it connected to the larger twins intestine," per The New York Times -which is why the smaller fetus is frequently known as a parasitic twin.

FYI- this all went down at 35 weeks' gestation, five weeks before full-term birth, which sets this fetus-in-fetu case apart from others that have, believe it or not, occurred over the past few years, such as those in India and Indonesia .

Anyway, two weeks later, at 37 weeks gestation, Vega gave birth via c-section to a seven-pound baby girl named Itzamara. And just one day later (!!), the newborn underwent laparoscopic surgery to remove the fetal twin, who measured at about two inches long, Parra-Saavedra told The New York Times .

While your brain's trying to process all of this scientific craziness (no rush, it'll take awhile), here's some concrete info-and good news!-that you can definitely understand: both mom and baby girl are doing well.